What next for Arvind Kejriwal? With Delhi gone, his party lands in an existential crisis. It doesn’t matter that the party secured a respectable 43.5 of the vote share or it continues to hold strong in ‘poor’ constituencies. The dip in vote share was a massive 10 per cent. It not only takes power – a critical factor for the survival of any fledgling political outfit – away from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) but also lands a crushing blow to the aura of Kejriwal as a leader who had been punching well above his political weight so far.
What led to his party’s debacle? It’s not the Narendra Modi factor to begin with. The Modi wave was far more strong in 2015 and 2020, yet the BJP’s seats in the 70-member assembly remained in a single digit on both occasions. No doubt Modi has a strong loyal support base, but it was never enough to trouble the AAP. In Kejriwal it had a leader who could be Delhi’s answer to the BJP’s mascot. As the results reveal, brand Modi may not have been stronger than earlier, but brand Kejriwal had shrunk considerably.
It was not the refusal of the AAP to forge an alliance with the Congress either. The latter increased its vote share by close to two per cent – from 4.26 percent in 2020 to 6.36 percent in 2025. The hike came from the ruling party’s vote share and it dented the prospect of the AAP in at least 15 seats. Some experts suggest that a combined vote share of around 50 per cent could have worked in favour of the AAP-Congress combine. But such arithmetic, as evidenced by the parliamentary polls results, doesn’t work in reality. A full mutual transfer of votes happens rarely. The results would not have been different had they fought together.
Were the corruption charges against the top leaders of AAP the deciding factor? No. Corruption is a force multiplier in Indian elections, not the central factor. It rides on the general negative perception. The perception of the AAP has been on the slide in the last five years. As the voting pattern suggests the middle class, a strong support base of the party, has shifted away from it, partly because of disillusionment. Pitted against the BJP, which would weaponise every resource at its command to win elections, goodwill was the only means for Kejriwal’s party to bank on. It was running thin on goodwill.
In an earlier article, the perspectivebytes.com had mentioned that Kejriwal had lost the halo of the anti-corruption crusader or a man who would change the quality of politics; he was now a regular politician and would be judged as one. In the latest assembly elections, he brought nothing extra to the table like earlier. Victimhood was his biggest campaign talking point. It was possibly nullified by the anti-incumbency sentiment built over ten years.
So, coming back to the question we started with, what next for Kejriwal and AAP? The future doesn’t look too bright. There would be a problem with financial resources to keep the party going. Then what if Bhagwant Mann, the AAP’s face in Punjab, decided to turn more assertive? For an outfit which has gained the status of a national party in a short time, may lose it all quickly.
Kejriwal has already burnt the bridge with the Congress by refusing to cede space to it. It started in Haryana where it didn’t agree to a seat-sharing arrangement with the former. In Delhi, it was payback time for the Congress. Now that he does not command a state, Kejriwal’s position at the bargaining table becomes much weaker. His plans for the expansion of AAP into other states would take a hit. A rebound in Delhi may not be easy too.
The fact that Kejriwal lost his seat is likely to diminish his authority within the AAP. Party legislators would be open to poaching. In sum, it is likely to be a phase of political wilderness for both the leader and his party.
(By arrangement with Perspective Bytes)
