Politics in the national capital has come a full circle with the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on corruption charges by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Mr. Kejriwal, who rose to power a decade ago by launching scathing attacks over corruption against the Congress, and particularly former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, now finds himself having to prove his and his party’s “kattar imandar” (very honest) credentials and that too from prison.
An uneasy alliance
While Mr. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) faces its biggest challenge yet, just before the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress too finds itself in a predicament. The party, which ruled Delhi for 15 years before the AAP rode to power in 2015, has no seats in the Delhi Legislative Assembly and no representation from Delhi in Parliament. In this context, the 4-3 seat-sharing arrangement for Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats under the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc can be seen as an attempt by the Congress to stay in the political mix in Delhi. This alliance is an uneasy one, however, given that the two parties are rivals elsewhere. In Punjab, for instance, the AAP and Congress have chosen to fight it alone; this is where the AAP came to power defeating the Congress in 2022. While the cadre of both the parties are still awaiting instructions from their leadership on how they plan to support each other after being bitter rivals for so many years, the factor that unites them is a dominant opponent in the form of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
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