LifenStory

Delhi election 2015 final tally was

AAP—67 seats

BJP— 3 seats

Congress—0 seats

These results are more a defeat of BJP and Congress than victory of AAP. To understand this lets go back to the 2014 Loksabha election. Though BJP had been branded as communal party and many negative names were used to describe it, but it won with very good majority. The Congress party that had ruled for two consecutive terms lost so badly, it suddenly appeared obsolete. It did not even have sufficient seats to be opposition leader!

AAP that had looked as formidable challenge after 2013 Delhi elections also suffered a very poor performance in national election and appeared as no match to BJP’s popularity

Even the other political parties that had joined hands to oppose BJP and present an alternative to BJP & Congress, popularly called third front lost in national election.

BJP not just won the Lok sabha election but also won the state election after that in multiple states. Even in the places where they did not win majority they increased their seats tally example Jammu Kashmir. So slowly it appeared that BJP was just insurmountable.

But something happened after that in 2015 and BJP lost election in Delhi. The 2015 Delhi elections have thrown a totally different outcome. What happened in this election that made the voter change their preference so drastically that BJP was just able to win 3 seats only? Why People rejected Congress to zero seats?

Let's first check the reasons for the defeat of Congress. This is important because the reasons for loss of Congress gives us hint to why BJP lost election of Delhi in 2015

1) Corruption -Corruption was top reason for the Congress debacle. Anti corruption campaign led by Anna with help from Arvind Kejriwal, acquired huge support and Congress appeared to be on the back foot in ending the menace of corruption. After Arvind Kejriwal separated from Anna's movement he presented his party Aam Admi party as an alternative to Congress to decrease corruption. It got support from the common people. So the Delhi election results in 2013 were - Congress lost majority, their three time CM leader lost her seat, though AAP was a new party it got close to majority.

2) Crime against women - Congress appeared to believe that crime against women was most important election issue. It went into mode of giving knee jerk reaction to issues related to alleged crime against women. It modified the rape law to such a retrograde level that it became demonic in nature. Already misused rape law now became the weapon of choice to trap men and destroy their life. The public in general was observant to this one sided law making and the dissent just increased. In their blind race to encash perceived women sentiments they also enacted a draconian sexual harassment at work place bill. This law was so biased that it just neglected the fact that even men get harassed by women and even women file fake case of harassment. This law too turned out to be weapon of choice to destroy career of innocent men. Congress neglected to put safeguards in the laws it proposed. It failed in its duty of protecting innocents, this lead to many male supporters losing faith in Congress. So the strategy of Congress to win votes for reducing crime against women backfired as it increased crime against men in terms of fake cases and extortion from men. This is also noticed from increase in male suicides near the end of the Congress term.

3) Women Empowerment - Dumped from the west this was the buzz word for the Congress. But aping west does not guarantee success, especially if the wrong attributes are aped. So under the name of women Empowerment Congress started multiple programs. But they forgot that empowerment of one section at the cost of other will not benefit them and they proposed to create IrBM law along with other one-sided law. This mistake turned out to be the start of their downward spiral in elections. The Indian population that believed in family system saw red in the provisions of this law. Muslim population that had been staunch supporter of Congress also felt let down after knowing about the provisions of this law. Many social organizations sent their representation to Congress to amend the draconian provisions of the proposed retrograde law, but in its blind race for vote Congress decided to go ahead with this law.

4) Black money -Though it is linked to corruption and should not have been listed separately, but too much of hype was created by other parties and the anti-corruption movement about black money. So much so that people started believing that if black money is brought back to the country they would see considerable improvement in the country. Congress was not able to offer any convincing reply to the claims made by other parties about their failure to bring back black money.

5) Development - The people could see lot of development projects either getting stuck or not even taking off during the second half of the Congress rule.

6) Cross border aggression—Congress was seen as weak in retaliating against aggression by neighboring countries.

These six issues predominantly caused the loss of Congress and rise of AAP and BJP.

Now coming back to why BJP lost Delhi election. The same reasons that caused the down fall of Congress, nibbled away support from BJP too.

1) Black money - Even after months of coming to power BJP has not been able to make any substantial headway towards getting back the alleged black money. It also has failed to present a believable plan to do it. People were getting impatient to see change they were promised.

2) Development - On this front the BJP government still has time to prove themselves. So this factor did not mark much change this election.

3) Corruption - AAP had been able to defeat three time Congress chief minister Sheila Dikshit in Delhi using corruption issue. Corruption had been one of the most important issues that helped BJP win Lok sabha election. But in 2015 BJP’s female CM candidate Kiran Bedi neglected corruption elimination. She went on to say that corruption was not at all her priority! People of Delhi were just shocked to hear, corruption was 7th on her agenda! The junta that voted for BJP with only expectation of getting rid of corruption felt cheated. The party appeared that it was not really serious about decreasing corruption.

4) Crime against women - After coming to power BJP too fell for the bait that crime against women is a vote minting issue. So they decided to have a makeover to project themselves as a highly women friendly party. So they brought in a ex police woman as their CM candidate. She too enforced the makeover plan by saying, reducing crime against women was her first priority. But Delhi was city that saw very high rate of crime against men, more murders and abuse of men occurred compared to women..The voters were hardly impressed. Also the voters wanted to get the city rid of this tag of being the “fake rape” capital due to biased laws misused by women.

With such a CM candidate that neglected crime against men and law misuse by women. BJP forgot to notice that AAP too had failed to reach majority in the previous Delhi election due to their neglect of male voters and crime against men.

5) Women Empowerment - BJP too tried to blindly ape the Congress policy of flawed women empowerment. They also thought of making it a zero sum transaction where one gender gains at the cost of the other gender. So they planned to review the IrBM law that Congress failed to pass. This was their biggest goof up. BJP forgot that Indian population believed in family system and India was still far away from the single parent system. So such a law could not help the family, but ruin it. BJP lost large number of supporters due to this misstep.

6) Cross border aggression— BJP too appeared as weak in retaliating against aggression by neighboring countries like China & Pakistan. The assertiveness that people expected to see after BJP came to power was not delivered.

To sum it up BJP without the aim of reducing corruption did not appeal people and its experiment to look like a feminist party further decreased its appeal. If BJP does not improve it’s outlook after Delhi election, it too will become obsolete like Congress.

Congress had already been rejected due to it’s anti family men policies and corruption charges from multiple scandals.

So the voters were forced to look for alternative of Congress & BJP in form of AAP in Delhi elections of February 2015.

Why BJP lost election in Delhi