Aditya Sinha: Kejriwal, the man they all love to hate

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal offers prayers at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Most pre-election surveys in Punjab have predicted a big win for AAP. Pic/AFP

During the past week, the Congress Party and the Akali Dal, the BJP's coalition partner, have been dumping on their common enemy, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, whose Aam Aadmi Party threatens to snatch the Punjab Assembly election from them in a few months. They have not gone as far as formally joining one another (but if the Congress continues its downward spiral, then anything is possible in the 2020s). But state Congress chief Captain Amarinder Singh and the Akali's deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal are so unnerved at the prospect of losing to a political interloper that they've become as one in repeated political attacks on Kejriwal. Their dislike for the anti-corruption crusader-turned-CM is not unique; every diehard supporter of both the BJP and the Congress seems to have a personal hatred for Kejriwal. The Congress because AAP is eating them alive; the BJP because he is likely to be an obstacle to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's return in 2019.

Most pre-election surveys in Punjab have predicted a big win for AAP, along the lines of what happened in Delhi last time around. Thus the talk recently has been that Badal will hold "friendly fights" against the Congress in some seats, merely to deny AAP a victory in those seats (Badal is willing to sacrifice seats, a tacit validation of the surveys). Kejriwal has gone as far as tweeting that Badal - about whom stories of graft are legend - will subsidise the Congress's election. He claims that it will be payback for when the Captain got the UPA to go easy on the state cabinet minister who is widely seen as Punjab's Pablo Escobar.

Another weathervane for Punjab is former Test cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, who is bargaining hard with Kejriwal to be deputy CM in an AAP win, if not CM itself. (He also wants something for his wife Navjot in case of an AAP win; she is an MLA who recently quit the BJP.) Badal's wife has been attacking Sidhu on social media, so it's possible the Badals have a preference when it comes to Sidhu joining AAP or Congress.

With things going AAP's way - only a partisan would predict another party's victory in Punjab - it is unlikely that Modi will be a star campaigner there. He might even be advised against going to Amritsar, where the RSS attitude of ‘Sikhs are a part of us' does not go down well. There are hardly any prime ministerial venues for campaigning outside Chandigarh. And there's always the excuse that the PM and the BJP are focused on the grand prize, the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election.

You have to respect the fact that Kejriwal has not jumped into the crowded UP battlefield; it shows that he is not letting unrealistic ambition dictate the pace of AAP's growth, which is clearly aimed at replacing the Congress party as the BJP's opposite pole in national politics. After Punjab, his profile has lately been highest in Gujarat, but again here his ambition is realistic: he's doing enough to attract voters from the moribund Congress organisation to his own outfit, realising that toppling Modi's party in the PM's home state might be too tall an order. From various accounts, the AAP is looking healthy enough for a surgical strike in the Goa election, which will no doubt upset our Defence Minister. UP however is India's largest state; the contestants there are strongly entrenched, be it Mayawati's BSP, the BJP or CM Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (currently in turmoil as family members jostle for the post-Mulayam Singh Yadav phase). There is little point in AAP doing more than register a token presence in the election.

If things go well for AAP in Punjab then my guess is that their next target would be Rajasthan. Like Punjab, it has an unpopular incumbent government led by BJP CM Vasundhara Raje; as in Punjab the Congress is hobbled by factionalism and a wobbly organisation, despite having several major-league leaders like former CM Ashok Gehlot and former minister Sachin Pilot. In the Congress, it does not matter if you have years of experience, or if you know the party machinery at the state level, or if you are a popular leader. For any decision you need the ‘high command's' approval, which always takes its time. Ever since Rahul Gandhi raised his profile in the party he has only created a second power centre without sorting out the party's fundamental problems. Now, a third power centre around sister Priyanka Vadra is slowly but surely coalescing. The situation is ripe for AAP.

The Congress faces slow death and the BJP prefers a weak opposition to an energetic upstart. You can expect them, post Assembly polls, to continue attacking Kejriwal, the man they love to hate.

Senior journalist Aditya Sinha is a contributor to the recently published anthology House Spirit: Drinking in India. He tweets @autumnshade. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com