The phenomenal performance of Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party (AAP) in Punjab will help it emerge as a pivotal player in the non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) camp and set the stage for ‘NDA versus regional parties’ duel in the 2024 general elections.
The victory also puts AAP as a key challenger to BJP at pan-India levels for the first time. With the Congress increasingly losing ground, AAP’s expansion mode might see it take on the saffron brigade in the latter’s fiefdom of Gujarat. With Delhi and Punjab under its control, the AAP has declared itself a potent force to take on the BJP.
The Congress, which had tried to keep AAP out of the Opposition’s power play for long, is bound to lose its grip, at least for the time being, with parties such as AAP, the Trinamool Congress, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) waiting to play a bigger role.
“The Congress and AAP now have equal number of states,” quipped a Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP, underlining the importance of AAP in the Opposition’s scheme of things. Kejriwal is ruling Delhi and set to win Punjab. The Congress is now left with just Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
AAP’s victory in Punjab will embolden a significant group within the non-BJP quarters and also fuel West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s plan to skirt the ‘grand old party’ and create an alliance of non-Congress, non-BJP outfits such as the TMC, AAP, Biju Janata Dal (BJD), TRS, YSRCP, Janata Dal (Secular) and Shiv Sena, among others.
Kejriwal and Banerjee also enjoy a good rapport, with the West Bengal chief minister being the first Opposition leader to invite Kejriwal for talks after the latter won Delhi for the first time. In the last Opposition meeting in August, Banerjee had insisted that AAP, Naveen Patnaik’s BJD and the TRS should also be invited to such Opposition meetings.
However, those meetings would now be least relevant for AAP and other regional parties. Kejriwal, Banerjee, Uddhav Thackeray and the others would soon chart their own course of action for 2024.
