What explains the big BJP win in the Capital

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last ruled the national capital in the 1990s. Today's Delhi is a different city.

- Neelanjan Sircar

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last ruled the national capital in the 1990s. Today's Delhi is a different city. It changed from the "dusty town" of the 1990s to a hugely cosmopolitan city attracting talent from across India, and the world, as the core of the National Capital Region (NCR). The early 2000s, under the stewardship of Congress chief minister Sheila Dixit, saw a major transformation of Delhi's physical space with the making of broad roads and significant greening. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal, won office for the first time in 2013, riding a wave of middle-class and upper-class discontent with the perceived corruption of the Congress.

Today, the desertion of middle- and upper-class voters is the primary reason for the AAP's defeat. Even the once unassailable Kejriwal lost his seat. In office, the AAP had re-branded itself as a party that catered to the lower middle-class and poorer voters by promising free water and electricity and revamping public education and public health, while at the same holding on to a modicum of the middle-class vote by presenting an image of incorruptibility and offering a different kind of politics. But murmurs about corruption in liquor licences, the alleged opulence of some of the AAP leaders, and a general malaise after returning to office in 2020 saw these middle-class and upper-class voters deserting the party.