To create a successful start-up in politics is arguably much tougher than to create a winner in business. The entry barriers are huge. Entrenched parties will spare no effort to ward off those daring to enter long-held domains. The media tends to be derisive about small new players. Which is why for the Aam Aadmi Party, founded in 2012 on the back of the 2011 India Against Corruption movement, to have formed governments in Delhi and Punjab and become a national party in only a decade, is nothing short of remarkable.
This is the reason why even with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal jailed, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia also in prison for a year, and the party finding itself at a crossroads, the AAP is still deeply bothersome to the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party.
For the BJP, the Congress is a pushover. In the over 180 one-on-one direct fights between the BJP and Congress in the Lok Sabha polls of 2019, the Congress won just about 15. Congress vs BJP is thus a no-contest. But BJP vs AAP or BJP vs Trinamool Congress? Not so easy. The AAP has wiped out the BJP in Delhi not once but twice, in the assembly polls held in 2015 and 2020. The TMC withstood an intense-as-it-gets no-holds-barred attack from the BJP in West Bengal’s assembly elections of 2021, and contrary to Delhi-based political commentary and exit polls, trounced Modi’s army.
