NEW DELHI – In a stunning defeat for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, the upstart anti-corruption Common Man Party appeared headed for a landslide victory as votes were tallied in the city-wide elections in Delhi on Tuesday. The contest was widely viewed as a measure of Modi’s political clout here.
Supporters of the Common Man Party, wearing their trademark white caps, danced to loud music and waved party flags in celebration at the party’s office in the heart of the capital. When party founder Arvind Kejriwal stepped out, they showered him with marigold and rose petals.
“We did not have money, we did not have the resources. But when you decide to walk on the path of truth, then all the forces of the universe help you,” said Kejriwal, who founded the party, also known as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), two years ago.
“It is very scary, such a big mandate the people have given us,” he said. “I would like to request everybody to not be arrogant. What happened to the Congress party and the BJP today was because of their arrogance. We have to fold our hands humbly and serve the people. We can turn Delhi into a city that can be a pride of both the poor and rich people.”
Media reports said that Modi phoned and congratulated Kejriwal, and invited him to tea.
But Delhi proved to be a tough battle for the BJP because of the appeal of the charismatic Kejriwal, a former tax officer-turned anti-corruption activist. His small party was leading in 62 voting districts out of a total of 70. Modi’s BJP was leading in 7.
One television news station called the outcome a “tectonic shift in Indian politics.”
“This was the battle between the storm and the candle. The candle of hope is winning,” said Yogendra Yadav, a senior member of the Common Man Party. “How could we even think of fighting such big political parties with so much money? But the people are carrying us on their shoulders today.”
The election results is something of a comeback for Kejriwal and his group of new supporters. Their last try at running the city government in early 2014 dissolved in chaos after a few weeks.
Analysts say a chastened Kejriwal — who routinely apologized for his record on the campaign trail — still managed to bring in poor voters and the city’s middle-class, who remain disillusioned over politics in India, where mainstream parties are widely viewed as corrupt, opaque and thriving on manipulation of religious and caste identities.
“Though this is not a referendum on Modi’s national government, but this may be used as a peg to build up criticism against him,” said Manisha Priyam, the India coordinator for election research for the London School of Economics and Political Science. “The result has shown us that democracy has a natural tendency to throw up alternatives. The people may have voted for the BJP and Modi at the national level just last May, but they wanted a local leader on the ground.”
Rajesh Rajamoni, a 27-year old plumber who lives in an impoverished slum of laborers, said he voted for AAP because he wanted a government that understood the problems of the poor.
“I have seen many big leaders giving big speeches. But Arvind Kejriwal is an ordinary man, he speaks like us,” said Rajamoni. “Being poor in a big city is not easy. We are always harassed for bribes by the police, by municipal corporation officers. We want a leader who will take on the corrupt.”
The BJP, Rajamoni said, was a party of “rich people, big people.”
To counter Kejriwal’s image as the anti-corruption crusader, the BJP brought in his former ally from the movement, Kiran Bedi, who was India’s mostfamous female police officer.
But Bedi, 65, failed to connect with many voters, and indeed with the rank-and-file of her own party who resented her as an outsider who was thrust upon them in recent weeks. Some voters in the slum said she spoke to them like a police inspector still.
Social commentator Mukul Kesavan wrote on an NDTV blog item that Bedi spoke with the scolding tone of a teacher and with humorless self-righteousness.
“Poor people suffer the most at the hands of the police, and the BJP made the mistake of bringing in a former police officer as their candidate for chief minister of Delhi,” said Priyam.
The BJP continued to rely heavily on Modi’s image and put his face on billboards across the city with the tag line: “Let’s march with Modi.” But the campaign styles of the two party leaders sharply diverged.
While Modi flew down in a special chopper from his office to address large public meetings in the city, Kejriwal addressed voters in dozens of small, street-corner meetings and focused on local issues. As Modi gave grand-sounding stump speeches and wore expensive clothes while hosting with President Obama with round-the-clock media coverage ahead of the polls, Kejriwal quietly worked the crowded lanes of slums wearing, as usual, his wool muffler around his head.
Santosh Desai, a newspaper columnist, wrote on Monday that Kejriwal restored “to politics its feisty localness of spirit,” while Modi continued to be the master of grand “aerial battles.”
Kejriwal, 45, started his early career working for India’s tax service, but became disillusioned by corruption he saw in the Indian bureaucratic and political system. He worked with the city’s poor, demanding greater transparency in government programs for many years before he spearheaded nationwide street demonstrations against rampant corruption in 2011 which, at the time, was called “India’s Arab Spring.”
In 2012, he formed his own political party with some of the activists of the Aam Aadmi Party. Bedi parted ways with him at that time, saying she did not want to be part of a formal political party.
Kejriwal pulled off a surprise victory in the Delhi elections in late 2013 by upsetting a popular three-term chief minister. But his tenure as the city’s boss was controversial. His administration self-destructed in just 49 days after Kejriwal shut down the city center in a protest over police corruption, a debacle that damaged his political career and disillusioned supporters.
The city has been run by the national government for the past year.
This time on the campaign trail, his opponents skewered Kejriwal as a “bhagoda” — the Hindi word for someone who flees responsibility. At every public meeting, Kejriwal apologized for resigning and told voters that he had committed a mistake but not a sin. He also reminded voters that during his brief rule, his government halved electricity bills, and small-scale acts of corruption by public officials declined.
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