Why AAP fell

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is an unfolding story in our contemporary political history.

- MOHUA CHATTERJEE

Whether the party, launched in 2012 by Arvind Kejriwal and his associates with robust ground support, survives the political upheaval of time or fades away as a euphoric episode in India's colourful political canvas is the question that not just political observers but AAP members are looking to answer.

The Aam Aadmi Party: The Untold Story of a Political Uprising and its Undoing, by Sayantan Ghosh, comes at this crucial juncture in 2025. Delhi's own party, the only one so far, soared to the heights in 13 years, wiping out all opposition to make a three-term chief minister and then went down to the Bharatiya Janata Party earlier this year. With Mr Kejriwal himself defeated at the hustings, the party sitting in opposition in Delhi and having installed a common man chief minister, Bhagwant Mann, in Punjab, this book comes up with well-researched insight needed to address the AAP's existential questions.

To look at where the AAP is headed, it is important to study the party's building bricks. While it was born out of activism—against corruption and failed delivery systems—it was a lack of ideology that seems to have discredited it. The writer's perspective has perfect clarity on this basic trend.