The optics of seven Rajya Sabha members of the Aam Aadmi Party crossing over to the Bharatiya Janata Party papers over the fact that India’s most successful political start-up has weathered similar crises from its infancy, losing many of its prominent founding members — through departures and expulsions — within three years of existence. Still, it managed to grow to become a national party in a decade. What has changed though in the same time frame is that the AAP no longer represents the promise of being an alternative political party: it now resembles just another political party, making the same kind of Faustian bargains it had once railed against. Ironically, the cause for disenchantment with the AAP is also seen to be the party’s strongest card — the image, and perhaps pragmatism, of Arvind Kejriwal, whose ambition to pick up more states on a trot has brought the party to its recent crisis. Four of the seven members who jumped ship are moneybags from Punjab; they were apparently given Rajya Sabha seats to help the party develop the financial muscle it needed for the Gujarat polls in 2022. The AAP had gone down the same route earlier too, displaying a haste that was bound to backfire at some point.
The defection and the subsequent merger of the seven deserters have strengthened the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upper House even though the AAP has indicated that it will challenge the merger in court citing the anti-defection law. A bigger worry for the party is the shadow this development casts on its government in Punjab; there is speculation about a possible ‘Operation Lotus’ on the Bhagwant Singh Mann dispensation in that state. Another point of concern for the AAP
would be the perceived change in its organisational culture. Much like the Congress of yore and the BJP under the duopoly of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, the AAP seems to be enamoured with a high command culture that is anti-democratic. After launching itself with a collective leadership format, the AAP allowed itself to become
the replica of one-man parties that populate India’s political firmament. It even roped in
Mr Kejriwal’s wife to don the political mantle when the former chief minister was imprisoned in the Delhi liquor policy scam. Prior to that, the party’s constitution was amended to allow him to continue as national convenor indefinitely. The centralisation of power within the party has dismantled its original, collective character. Is that the cause of the sea of trouble?