Delhi Election 2025: AAP’s Toughest Contest Yet

“My friend always told me she could get me work in Vasant Vihar, but it was so far that travelling alone would take too much time and cost too much money every day. Now, I can use the bus for free. And the buses are nicer and cleaner, so there is some sense of ease in my home,” says the single mother of three. She earns Rs 9,000 per home, most of it in cash. She attributes the Rs 20,000 she has in savings to welfare schemes by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). She also recalls the first time she received Rs 1,000 from the AAP government’s Mahila Samman Yojana scheme.

“That money, the Rs 1,000, helped me feed my children properly, helped me buy a gas cylinder and some new clothes for them for school. It was the difference between us beggin🐭g our neighbours for scraps and♚ us holding our head high,” she says.

But when the water crisis hit Delhi in🌠 September, just before the Diwali season, Geeta wondered if the AAP government in the national capital was too busy with “scams and sheesh mahals (glass palaces)” to do right by her and the city’s 33 million residents. Even now, a week before the elections, Geeta says she doesn’t know who to vote for.

She asks a question that has echoed in many voters’ minds in Delhi. “AAP has done work. We can see it. But they are always fighting with the BJP and I am൲ scared that they will be too busy fighting for the next five years, so when will they have time to govern?” she wonders. 

On February 5, 2025, Delhi will vote to elect its new government. By February 8, it will b൲e clear whether AAP’s welfare and populist schemes secure the party a fourth term or if the🧸 BJP’s high-octane anti-incumbency campaign pays off.

Delhi’s electorate is largely middle-class and reliant on AAP’s welfare schemes, notes Ajay Gudavarthy, associate professor of political science at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). He says AAP’s governance has deteriorated over the past three years due to ▨the Lieutenant Governor’s (LG) deliberate obstruction, preventing the party from functioning effectively despite its earlier record of reasonably good governance. ❀“So, the choice for the electorate is that: if they vote AAP back, then will the LG continue to interfere and people in Delhi will continue to suffer? They’ve (BJP) fixed people in a Catch-22 situation here.”

The battle for Delhi’s 70💞 assembly seats is crucial not only for the capital cit🐓y’s residents but also for the three contesting parties: the AAP, BJP and Congress.

Most analysts and polls favour AAP, but this will be its toughest electio𝓡n yet. No longer the wide-eyed party of 2014, Kejriwal and senior leaders face corruption charges and tensions with the BJP-led Centre and LG VK Saxena. The BJP, out of power in Delhi for 27 years, hopes to gain ground, while Congress sees a chance to reclaim its lost vote bಞank.

Litmus Test for AAP’s Welfare Model

Leaders of AAP, a party rooted in anti-corruption, face multiple graft charges, the latest from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which secured the Union Home Ministry’s approval to prosecute the former Delhi👍 CM in the excise-linked money laundering case weeks before polls.

However, AAP’s welfare track record and Arvind Kejriwal’s pragmatic resignation have softened the impact. Meanwhile, BJP’s corruption accusations may not sway voters, given its own track record vis-à-vis the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)𝄹. In 2022, AAP cited an RTI revealing a Rs 6,760 crore discrepancy under BJP’s MCD rule.

Indian voters, says Gudavarthy, rarely see corruption as a decisive issue. “Corruption is a non-issue in Indian politics. I don’t think the corruption narrative is a ga🙈me-changer. It may have dented Kejriwal’s image, but people don’t seem to vote based on corruption.” He cites the recent Maharashtra elections, where Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar won despite numerous graft charges.

Other analysts agree. “There is a section of voters who are AAP loyalists and believe this is BJP’s strategy to trouble AAP and create obstacles for them. However, voters in India understand that politicians engage in illegal activities or corruption, and they are fine with it to an extent, as long as they🧔 continue to receive benefits from the government,” says Rahul Verma, fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and visiting assistant professor in🌼 the Department of Political Science at Ashoka University.

Kejriwal has also tried to turn the graft charges against AAP leaders on their head by framing the narrative as one “between the politics of work and the politics of abuse,” as he posted on X. He also dis𝐆rupted BJP’s massive rallies💦 by going on a padayatra and meeting people on the streets.

AAP’s campaign promises have centred on its record of good governance, particularly the success of welfare schemes like free electricity and water, free bus rides for women, and upgraded government schoolsඣ. Party leaders have also highlighted AAP’s fulfilment of promises such as free Wi-Fi and mohalla clinics.

BJP Battling For Prestige

For the BJP, Delhi has been both a hurdle and a humbler. Despite dominating national elections since 2014, including winning all of the capital’s Lok Sabha seats in 2024, it has failed to secure a Delhi assembly victory since 1998, when Sushma Swaraj was the last BJP Chief Minister.

However, the BJP has steadily increased its vote share in Delhi Assembly elections, from 32.2 per cent in 2015 to 38.5 per cent in 2020. The party’s campaig✱n focuses on corruption allegations against AAP and infrastructure development under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government. BJP leaders, including Modi and party president JP Nadda, held rallies promoting a ‘Viksit Delhi,’ with the PM inaugurating key projects in January, reinforcing the party’s development agenda.

Parvesh Verma, the party’s candidate for the New Delhi seat, has said, that the AAP government “not only caused ⛦corruption in Delhi but has also ruined Delhi.” He has added that he wants the city’s residents to “save Delhi.”

The BJP’s other poll plank has been the alleged sheesh mahal scandal surrounding Kejriwal’s official residence. The BJP accused AAP of spending excessively on refurbishing the CM’s bungalow, dubbing ♛it a sheesh mahal. BJP state unit chief Virendra Sachdeva also referred to the AAP ruling dispensation as “a government of crimina🌃ls on bail.”

However, the BJP appears to have lost crucial momentum i♔n the last month. With no strong CM candidate to field against Kejriwal, the saffron party seems to be relying heavily on🧜 PM Modi’s popularity and the cases against AAP leaders. “For them to dislodge AAP, they needed a serious story about why they should be in power in Delhi. The BJP hasn’t given that story. They are focusing on AAP’s corruption charges but haven’t made a case for why they (BJP) are good for the city,” says Verma.

However, questions remain about whether the BJP’s national appeal will translateﷺ into local success.

Congress Hand-in-Glove with BJP?

The Congress, once a force to be reckoned with in Delhi, now appears to be a shadow of its ꦍformer self. Though the party has tried to capitalise on the gh𒈔osts of its halcyon days by fielding Sandeep Dikshit, son of the last Congress Delhi CM, the late Sheila Dikshit, it has failed to capture the voters’ attention.

Gudavarthy says the Congress has been slow off the blocks and that trademark in-house confusion continues to dog the party. “It is an echo of Haryana. Most places Congress loses out on because of꧙ these organisational issues,” he adds.

Interestingly, despite its success with the INDIA bloc in the national election, the Congress did not ally itself with AAP in any assembly elections. A source inside AAP says that after the parties failed to reach a consensus in the Haryana assembly polls, there was “no qꦜue🐼stion of aligning with them in Delhi when AAP has all the votes.”

But Congress’s performance and its impact are a matter of interest for all parties, especially the BJP, says former Lok Sabha member Arun Kumar. He points out that Congress’s vote share was overtaken by AAP in 2015. Therefore, any recovery would come at AAP’s expense, not BJP’s. “Until or unless Congress rises in Delhi and wins at least 15 seats, the BJP cannot come into power,” he says, hinting that the Congress and BJP may have formed an informal alliance, with the BJP strat🥃egically fielding weaker candidates in certain seats to allow Congress to secure a percentage of the vote, ultimately aiming to reduce AAP’s vote share.

The party appears to be banking on growing dissatisfaction with both AAP and the BJP. Congress leader Alka Lamba, a candidate from the Kalkaji assembly constituency, recently stated: “There is anti-incumbency against both 𝔍the central and Delhi government. People are comparing the work done by different governments. For 15 years, Sheila Dikshit was governing. Kejriwal got🦂 a chance for three terms. People have analysed 10 years of this rule and they will vote for Congress this time.”

Analysts pre🎃dict that AAP may still emerge as the largest party, but with a reduced majority and that the BJP will likely improve its seat tally. But, given the unpredictable track record of Indian elections, one thing is for sure: this will be a tightly contested, closely watched🗹 race till the very end.

“To win an election you have to do many things right, but to lose an electꦅion you have to just make one mistake,” points out Ve𒁏rma.

(This appeared as 'Delhi Revdi' in Print)