In 2014, when Narendra Modi decided to contest for the first time for the Lok Sabha and from outside Gujarat, Arvind Kejriwal made an audacious move. He fielded himself against Modi from Varanasi when many other top Opposition faces did not take the gambit. Kejriwal lost, but made his point.
On Saturday, as Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia pitched Kejriwal as the PM face against Modi for the 2024 Lok Sabha election and said the entire country was rooting to give “ek mauka Kejriwal ko" in 2024, the political events seem to have come a full circle.
AAP, the only party besides the Congress to be in power in two states, has thrown the hat in the ring for the Delhi Chief Minister to be the Opposition’s ‘face’ to challenge Narendra Modi. There are others in the fray too — like Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and other Chief Ministers like Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar and K Chandrashekar Rao as well.
With the Opposition in disarray, what makes AAP think Arvind Kejriwal is a palatable choice among voters for the challenging task to take on Modi is the notion that he seems to be cut from similar cloth. With nationalism and soft Hindutva at the core of his politics, Kejriwal, over the years, has aimed for wider acceptability as a leader, citing his ‘aam aadmi’ image.
Be it installing hundreds of national flags in the state capital that gels with the PM’s Har Ghar Tiranga campaign to visits to temples or trumpeting his ‘Kattar Imandar’ (non-corrupt) image along with the latest pitch of ‘making India great and No.1’, the AAP feels that Kejriwal has pressed all the right buttons electorally. Kejriwal’s authority in his party is also unquestioned with no challenge from any leader and he is the AAP’s face to seek votes in multiple states, much like Narendra Modi is inside the BJP.
AAP is also the only other Opposition party apart from the Congress with organisational strength in multiple states in north and central India, the party maintains. While West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tried the same with forays into smaller states like Goa and Tripura, the results have not been encouraging so far. Congress leaders say that Banerjee’s image of minority appeasement and she being a non-Hindi speaking leader is a hurdle for her in north Indian states and the same showed up when she campaigned for Akhilesh Yadav in Varanasi in the recent UP elections. The BJP has repeatedly raked up her objection to Jai Sri Ram slogans in West Bengal to question her national ambitions.
KCR in Telangana faces a similar challenge as Mamata for the same reasons, with little resonance outside his home state. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, meanwhile, seems to have pitched himself for the role of the Opposition’s face against Modi in 2024 with his recent move to withdraw from the NDA to form a government in Bihar with the RJD, and his comment that “those who came in power in 2014 may not remain in 2024".
However, Kumar’s electoral stock is at a low ebb in Bihar despite his clean image and his ‘Vikas Purush’ pitch has taken a beating given his repeated political summersaults, exposing his dependence on others to stay in power and lack of credibility amongst other parties. The JD-U is presently the No.3 party in Bihar behind the RJD and the BJP.
The Congress still does not accept any other PM challenger besides Rahul Gandhi, as spelt out by the Bihar Congress President soon after the clamour for Nitish Kumar. However, a senior AAP leader told News18 that this is a “trap" that the Opposition must come out of, as having Rahul Gandhi as the PM face is what the BJP also wants after having defeated Rahul Gandhi’s challenge in both 2014 and 2019. Hence the pitch by Manish Sisodia on Saturday for “ek mauka Kejriwal ko" in 2024.
BJP leaders privately admit that Kejriwal does not take on Modi in a conventional way as other leaders, which makes him a contender to watch out for. This explains the strong attacks by the BJP on Kejriwal’s party on account of alleged corruption and scams by his ministers in Delhi or the questionable moves in Punjab where the AAP stormed to power earlier this year in a shocking result.
AAP is in an aggressive campaign mode in poll-bound states of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh as well as in Kejriwal’s home state of Haryana, where it is trying to emerge now as the main Opposition against the ruling BJP, side-lining the Congress party.
Adopting the “victim complex" and the pitch that he is being targeted by agencies on behalf of the BJP government, Kejriwal is prepping himself for the big move in 2024. He thinks he is the best chance the Opposition has for the tall task of challenging Modi in 2024.
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