In a big blow to the Aam Aadmi Party, its Delhi minister Raaj Kumar Anand on Wednesday resigned from all positions within AAP and also quit the party. “Today, I am resigning from all my posts and the primary membership of the AAP and after this I am feeling lighter,” said Anand. The Patel Nagar MLA accused AAP of being anti-Dalit. “I became a minister. Whatever I became, it was due to Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and to pay back to society…If a party backs out when it comes to representation of Dalits, I don’t think it is appropriate for me to stay within the party,” he said. Anand, who is a Jatav, also clarified that he is not joining any other party at the moment.
Reacting to Anand’s resignation, AAP Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh alleged, “We had said right from the first day that the intent behind arresting Arvind Kejriwal is to break AAP, finish AAP, not investigate to uncover corruption by Enforcement Directorate.”
He also lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party. Singh said, “BJP is that party which is guilty of indulging in gundagardi using the ED, CBI to break MLAs and ministers, and take them in. This is what they have done in Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh…Remember, this is a test for AAP, each minister and MLA, how we want to be remembered.”
What compounds AAP’s challenges is that Raaj Kumar Anand was the Dalit face of the Arvind Kejriwal cabinet. He held the portfolios of Social Welfare, SC & ST, Gurdwara Elections, etc. Anand’s resignation comes at a moment when chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is in judicial custody, bringing down the effective strength of the Delhi cabinet to five from seven and a new person may have to be inducted. When the Enforcement Directorate has objected to CM issuing instructions while in custody, how will Kejriwal be able to recommend someone else’s name? This question is looming over AAP.
Secondly, there will be a by-election in the Patel Nagar constituency ahead of the assembly polls in Delhi. Party insiders believe that Anand leaving will adversely impact AAP’s performance in this constituency. “It is an ominous sign that a person who was promoted by the party in spite of being a first-time MLA has left. In fact, there was some resentment among AAP’s Dalit MLAs when he was made a minister despite being a first-time MLA after Rajendra Pal Gautam was axed. There were more deserving candidates,” said an AAP insider.
Thirdly, the party is also apprehensive that other functionaries in Delhi may follow Anand as he has quit in spite of having been rewarded with a ministerial berth. In Punjab, AAP MP Sushil Kumar Rinku and MLA Sheetal Angural quit the party recently and joined the BJP. Rinku had already been declared as AAP’s candidate from Jalandhar for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Raaj Kumar Anand had joined AAP just around four years ago. In fact, his wife Veena Anand won an assembly election on an AAP ticket in 2013 and was left out in 2015. Raaj Kumar Anand got a ticket and won in 2020. In November 2023, officials of the Enforcement Directorate raided his offices as part of an investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) following a complaint by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence for alleged offences under sections of the Customs Act.
In October 2022, when AAP minister Rajendra Pal Gautam, a staunch Ambedkarite, was sacked following his presence at a religious conversion ceremony sparking a controversy, he told this reporter that he could not be distracted from the path of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and the day he would feel that AAP was an obstruction to his Ambedkarite mission, he would leave politics and work completely for the upliftment of society.
Additionally, 12 of the 70 assembly constituencies in Delhi are reserved for candidates belonging to Scheduled Castes. In 2013, AAP won eight of the 12 reserved constituencies and in 2015 and 2020, it bagged all these seats. Dalits constitute 20% of Delhi’s voters and in 2013, they shifted decisively from the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party towards AAP.
Of the capital’s seven Lok Sabha constituencies, North West Delhi is a reserved seat which the BJP won in 2014 and 2019. AAP’s Gugan Singh was a distant second in 2019 with 21% of the votes while BJP‘s Hans Raj Hans won an overwhelming 60%. In 2014 also, AAP’s Rakhi Bidlan was at number two while BJP’s Udit Raj won by over a lakh votes. In 2019, AAP was runners-up in the North West Delhi and South Delhi seats, while the Congress was in second place in the rest. The BJP won all seven Lok Sabha seats with an over 50% vote share.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, AAP has made a big noise about giving Kuldeep Kumar, a member of the Dalit community, a ticket from East Delhi, which is an unreserved constituency. The party’s symbol jhadoo (broom) is closely identified with Valmikis and was launched in the Valmiki Mandir in Delhi by Arvind Kejriwal. While AAP has managed to attract this voter base in Delhi and Punjab, it has reasons to worry after Dalit leaders Anand, Rinku, and Angural leaving the party.
Dalits constitute 32 per cent of Punjab’s population and 34 of the 117 constituencies in Punjab are reserved for Scheduled Castes. In Punjab assembly elections 2022, AAP won 29 of these 34 reserved constituencies.
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