Survival at stake? AAP faces trials as it climbs the political ladder

The year 2022, the tenth since the inception of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), was its annus mirabilis. It won Punjab in March, which meant it finally had a police force it commanded and secured two seats and nearly 7 per cent of votes in Goa. By December, it kicked the BJP out of Delhi's civic body while winning five seats and 13 per cent vote share in Gujarat to get the 'national party' status. But the seeds of what could turn out to be its annus horribilis — the year 2023 — were also sown last year.

On February 23, Amritpal Singh, a radical Sikh preacher and Khalistan sympathiser, along with his supporters, some brandishing swords and guns, broke through barricades and barged into a police station in Ajnala on the outskirts of Amritsar city. They extracted an assurance from the police that his aide and kidnapping case accused, Lovepreet Singh, would be released, which a local court later did.

Also Read: Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain: Trusted aides of Delhi CM Kejriwal

But ever since, the party's aspiration to rule a full-fledged state and command the police force has turned sour. There have been calls, including from security experts such as former Border Security Force (BSF) Director General Prakash Singh, demanding President's Rule in Punjab if the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government finds itself weak-kneed to rein in Amritpal. The criticism prompted Saturday's police crackdown on Amritpal's supporters and the suspension of internet services in the state.

On February 26, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia for alleged corruption in the now-scrapped liquor policy for 2021-22. The AAP will struggle to get Sisodia out of jail anytime soon, now that he faces two more cases. On March 9, the Enforcement Directorate arrested him for a money laundering probe related to the liquor policy. On March 14, the CBI lodged an FIR against Sisodia and others for their alleged role in setting up the Delhi government's snooping agency, its Feedback Unit, the FBU.

For every leader, there is one indispensable aide. For AAP Chief Arvind Kejriwal, that person is former journalist Manish Sisodia.

On the day the CBI arrested him, Sisodia tweeted his debt to his "political guru" Kejriwal.

But Sisodia is as much Kejriwal's friend as he is his confidant. As Sisodia tweeted in August 2022, when it became apparent that a probe into the excise policy was imminent, he would not think of betraying Kejriwal. "If Arvind is Krishna of our party, Manish is Arjun," an AAP leader said.

Also Read: Kejriwal refers to Sisodia as mythological character Prahlad, says he can’t be stopped

Political observers such as Yogendra Yadav have said Sisodia's arrest is meant to distract from the heat the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are facing over the Hindenburg Research allegations relating to the Adani Group. The AAP leadership is convinced their second most important leader is in jail because the BJP fears their party's meteoric growth.

During the election campaign in Gujarat, BJP workers were more concerned at AAP's growth than the Congress party's challenge. Across the country, AAP's promise of affordable public health and education has fascinated people, especially the urban poor. According to CVoter surveys in August and February, Kejriwal is the second-most popular choice as the country's prime minister for 2024 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But AAP is under siege. Utter confusion prevails in a party that had mastered the art of headline management, political spin, and in Kejriwal, an excellent political communicator. Soon after Sisodia's arrest, which came nine months after that of Health Minister Satyendar Jain in May 2022, the word from AAP was that Kejriwal will not fill the vacancies created by the two ministers having resigned. It was to send a message that the party was solidly behind the two leaders. However, within an hour, party sources said Atishi Singh and Saurabh Bhardwaj would take over the portfolios Sisodia and Jain had handled. It was a first for AAP that it did not blame the media for its current lot.

When Jain was arrested, the writing was on the wall for Kejriwal and his associates. They knew more such arrests were in the offing but did not expect Sisodia could be next. As their former colleague Ashutosh has said, Kejriwal and Sisodia were convinced that the excise policy was launched with the previous Delhi Lieutenant Governor, Anil Baijal, having approved it. But the rules of the game changed when the Centre replaced Baijal with V K Saxena on May 26, 2022. Days later, Jain was arrested.

Jain was only a notch below Sisodia in the AAP hierarchy and had Kejriwal's trust and ears. Kapil Mishra, who left AAP for the BJP, had alleged that he saw Jain handing over Rs two crore to Kejriwal. The allegation was never proven but added to the perception that Jain, an architect by training who had served in the Central Public Works Department, handled AAP's finances. With Jain and Sisodia in jail, Kejriwal would feel politically crippled, party sources said.

Also Read: AAP was rising. It had to be arrested

Sisodia ran the Delhi administration, heading 18 of the government's 33 departments. That the reins of the government were in Sisodia's hands gave Kejriwal enough time and space to devote time to political work and campaigning across the country. Kejriwal has continued to keep his chin up and has travelled to Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in recent weeks with Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann.

Sisodia and Jain's arrests have confused the Opposition, particularly the Congress. Some in the party's central leadership want the Congress to express solidarity with AAP and cite this as an instance of the Centre's abuse of probe agencies. The Delhi unit of Congress and some senior leaders blame Kejriwal and Sisodia's India Against Corruption campaign as the Trojan horse that felled the UPA government.

The BJP believes any sympathy for Sisodia would evaporate if he were to spend a few more months in jail. If AAP was thought to be different, the BJP is now trying to paint it as one cog in the wheel of "the coalition of the corrupt" against Modi. That Sisodia could spend more months in prison is a possibility since there are now three cases against him. Jain has been in custody since last May.

The cases could dent AAP's sheen as a 'clean' party since it was born from an anti-corruption movement. The 2022 Municipal Corporation of Delhi polls showed that while AAP continues to remain popular in Delhi, its support base among the minorities, especially the Muslims of Delhi, has shifted back to the Congress after its pusillanimity in taking a stand against the communal riots in northeast Delhi in February 2020. The leaked information from the CBI, chargesheet in the Enforcement Directorate cases and videos of Jain getting massages in his cell has hurt AAP's credibility among Delhi's urban middle class.

Jain and Sisodia's arrests signal that Kejriwal could be next. This is already hampering AAP's expansion across the country, and leaders are quitting the party while the activities of radical preacher Amritpal Singh embattled its Punjab government. Would the country's most successful political startup of recent times, a collection of educated middle-class individuals with no political pedigree who broke the mould of how politicians should act and behave, survive 2023?