Once, one was Arvind KejrivalA crusade against corruption, he brought back forgotten words like integrity and idealism in the political discourse and created immense possibilities of an alternative model of clean governance. His first swearing -in ceremony at Ramlila Maidan in the winter of 2013 did not feel like a momentary celebration of people’s power.
Delhi election results 2025
It was like the beginning of a movement for positive changes in the way of politics in the country. Thousands of men and women from every corner of India, from distant states like Telangana and Tamil Nadu, were ignored. Even his off-key-ra-randishan, “Inshan ka human se hochra” (film: Paigham), was not a dampenner.
For him, in short, Kejriwal was an icon of hope for a new, fearless India.
In the subsequent weeks and months, Kejriwal increased in reputation as a person and politician. Often wearing a shrub shirt, carrying a cheap ballpoint pen in the pocket of his shirt and wearing simple slippers, he became the correct picture of penance. And they maintained their election promises of free water and electricity, plans, which inspired them to the lower income class of the city.
When? AAPFormed in 2012, with a crushed majority in the office for the second time in 2015, Modisha returned to stop Jugurnat, Kejriwal became the hero of everyone in protest against the BJP. And, yes, despite sometimes cough and comfortable muffler around his head, he slept on the streets of Delhi in winter as an anti-Chief Minister. In those days, a recipient of the East-II-of-Fixer-Turist-Palitist-Politician-Buti-Buti-Buritician Award was talked about.
But in the last few years, gradually but of course, a cm holy personality with a frugal lifestyle has been closed. And, on Saturday, the later impact in the result of the Delhi assembly elections was observed. Two full conditions and 49 days later, it was first accepted in 2013, AAP faced a shattered and humble necklace. And Kejriwal, the party’s founder and Beating Heart, who once did CM Sheila Dixit the best by over 25,000 votes, lost his seat by more than 4,000 votes. AAP still manages a healthy 44% votes, but it is 9 percent less than the previous assembly elections.
Journalist Ashutosh, a prominent member of AAP in the past, says two things damaged Kejriwal’s image on a large scale: 2022 liquor case and CM bungalow dispute. “Nobody expected a man, who used to say that ministers and CMs should live in two-room flats to spend more than Rs 40 crore on their bungalow. Kejriwal entered politics in the hope of changing it. In Stad, politics replaced them, ”he says.
The case of multi-gruesome liquor, which is still in court, spent five months in Tihar. These developments, Ashutosh, says, Kejriwal lost his moral aura in the last five years. “It was his calling card in the first three assembly elections, the reason for the AAP’s major victory in 2015 and 2020,” he says.
Social commentator Santosh Desai also talks about peeling the individual aura of the AAP leader due to the liquor case and the renovation dispute of the house. But he also said that the BJP stopped Kejriwal and his party from any meaningful local government action. “Their hands were tied and dramatically reduced in the room to maneuver,” they say.
Desai also says that Kejriwal’s position was similar to someone who reaches a place unfamiliar with the original point of his journey to be politically relevant. “He may not be individually communal, but to neutralize the rightist, he began to practice a version of it, so that the party is not weak on the front. Kejriwal lost clarity as to who he was and what he represented, enabled the BJP to maximize the situation for its benefit. Keep together, it created a situation where the public felt that Kejirwal was no longer the figure that he was once, ”he says.
Free electricity (200 units), free water (20 kiloliter), better government schools, government hospitals (including free medicines)-Kejriwal created a positive playbook for free income, which provoked the lower age groups, Due to which he became his dedicated constituency. AAP offered women free bus rides, but the deteriorating condition of Delhi’s roads and uncontrolled pollution underlined that the party was not paying enough attention to its main jobs and middle class of the city.
Desai says that the AAP with his main calling card, with the ball, took its eyes, which is taking civil rule seriously. “What they were done only in their early years. After that, it became too much about the retention of power, ”he says.
Political scientist Dipankar Gupta provides a new angle for the list of clarification. He says AAP exiting a movement, but over the years, the party’s “movement dimensions”-participation, enthusiastic and target-oriented-lost. Without the “movement” element, it lost its Risnes D’Tray and became a competitor of established parties. Structurally, AAP was never a administration-oriented party, ”he says.
Hilal Ahmed of CSDS provides a similar view. He said that AAP had lost its ideological specialty before this election. “The cadre or leaders associated with it had been relying too much on the party’s success for years. After this defeat, they cannot find any attraction in the party or Kejriwal figures, ”they say.
So what for Kejriwal?
“They should find a new language for democracy, not just representation and choice. Otherwise, he will be caught in numerical pathology of the welfare state, ”says social scientist Shiva Vishwanathan. In other words, Kejriwal needs to strengthen his politics. The question is, is there a stomach for a scrap in a disappointing battle in the road-grain of the past?
