[Analysts said Mr.
Kejriwal’s victory suggested that India’s vast urban population was changing
the way it chose leaders. “Quality of life is now finding precedence over
caste, religion or neighborhood,” Shekhar Gupta, a veteran journalist and
political commentator, said Tuesday in televised remarks.]
By Gardiner Harris and Ellen Barry
 |
Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the young anticorruption party Aam Aadmi, spoke
with supporters after winning in the vote for the Delhi Assembly. Video by AP |
NEW DELHI — Less than a year after Narendra Modi won a historic victory to become India’s new prime minister, a smaller political earthquake struck the capital on Tuesday as Mr. Modi’s governing party lost badly in local elections to a young political organization led by an anticorruption crusader.
The Aam Aadmi Party, or
Common Man Party, won 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly, far more than
surveys or even the most enthusiastic of the party’s supporters had predicted.
Aam Aadmi is led by Arvind Kejriwal,
a former tax examiner who rose to fame as a campaigner against graft and
refashioned himself into a defender of this city’s lowest social strata.
Mr. Kejriwal briefly
served as Delhi’s chief minister a year ago, but he resigned after just 49 days. The
move was one of a series of apparent missteps he
has made since coming to prominence, including a cantankerous split with his
first political patron and, last year, a decision to create a national party
that would compete across India for parliamentary seats, which largely failed.
But Mr. Kejriwal’s
oft-repeated apologies and 70-point manifesto promising to improve the lives of
Delhi’s vast underclass — through a crackdown on corruption, as well as by
providing cheaper electricity, free water and more accessible schools —
resonated strongly across the sprawling capital region in the voting held on
Saturday.
Analysts said Mr.
Kejriwal’s victory suggested that India’s vast urban population was changing
the way it chose leaders. “Quality of life is now finding precedence over
caste, religion or neighborhood,” Shekhar Gupta, a veteran journalist and
political commentator, said Tuesday in televised remarks.
For Mr. Modi, the Delhi
results represent the first resounding defeat since his Bharatiya Janata Party
won an outright majority in the lower house of India’s Parliament in May, the
largest such majority in 30 years. In that election, the party won all seven
parliamentary seats in Delhi; as late as December, polls had indicated that the
B.J.P. would win the Delhi elections handily.
But despite a string of
successful foreign trips, Mr. Modi’s government has yet to demonstrably revive
India’s economy, which is producing a fraction of the jobs needed for the
roughly 12 million people who come of age here annually. This latest election
is the first sign that voters may be losing patience.
The Delhi results also
deepened the crisis engulfing the once-dominant Indian National Congress party,
which ruled Delhi for 15 years until 2013 but failed to win a single seat on
Tuesday despite vigorous campaigning byRahul
Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
Showered by rose petals
and raucous chants from hundreds of well-wishers who thronged the alley outside
his party’s headquarters, Mr. Kejriwal appeared on a third-floor balcony
flanked by his wife and closest aides on Tuesday.
“This is the triumph of
truth. Neither do we have money, nor do we have any resources,” Mr. Kejriwal
said in Hindi, Delhi’s dominant language. “But it’s scary. This huge mandate
begets responsibility in its wake. I would like to request all party workers to
remain humble and not indulge in the slightest bit of pride.”
Mr. Kejriwal said he
would take the oath as chief minister on Saturday at Ramlila Maidan, a field
where he helped stage vast anticorruption protests in 2011.
Half of India’s
population is under age 25, and Aam Aadmi has become the party of the young,
with thousands of students from around India volunteering as canvassers.
Nishtha Sood, 24, came from the southeastern state of Jharkhand because she saw
Mr. Kejriwal as the answer to the routine corruption that she said had cost her
father his land. “What other choice do we have if we want a corruption-free
government?” Ms. Sood asked.
Mr. Kejriwal’s vow to
crack down on small-scale corruption has particular resonance among slum
dwellers. The vast majority of Delhi’s cycle rickshaw drivers and street
hawkers, for example, do not have permits and are routinely pressured for small
bribes by constables who often pay bribes to land their jobs.
Soni, a one-named woman
who sells flatbread for 10 rupees, or 16 cents, apiece from a tiny brick oven
set up on a back street, said that before Aam Aadmi’s rise,
her family used to pay 1,000 rupees a month — roughly a quarter of their
earnings — in bribes to the police and licensing officials lest “the vehicle
come and take away my whole establishment.”
“I voted for the broom,”
she said on Tuesday, referring to Aam Aadmi’s ubiquitous symbol. “He is the man
who helps the poor.”
Beside her was Om Beer,
39, who sells buttermilk from a tin pail hooked to his bicycle. He said the
police did not usually ask him for money but regularly demanded cups of free
buttermilk.
“I’ve seen how they took
his bicycle away,” a bystander said, as Mr. Beer looked at his feet, ashamed.
“Why should I get angry?”
Mr. Beer said. “This is part of my life.”
Virender Kumar, 47, who
drives a motorized rickshaw, said on Tuesday that Mr. Kejriwal’s tenure leading
Delhi a year ago had offered a brief respite from bribetaking constables
because a hotline had been created to report corruption.
“Again it started after
he stepped down,” Mr. Kumar said, referring to routine extortion.
Commentators disagreed on
Tuesday about how badly Mr. Modi and his party would be wounded by the Delhi
results. In speeches, Mr. Modi had vilified Mr. Kejriwal, and Mr. Modi’s
picture was the dominant image on full-page newspaper ads in the days leading
up to the vote.
Mr. Modi won last year in
part by trumpeting his upbringing as the child of a tea-seller, a modest
background that contrasted sharply with that of Mr. Gandhi.
But recently, Mr. Modi
has been seen wearing a suit with pinstripes made from the repeated printing of
his own name, reported to have cost $17,000. Mr. Kejriwal, by contrast, is
known as “the muffler man” for his modest attire and his ungainly habit of
wrapping his head in a scarf to stay warm.
Mamata Banerjee, the
chief minister of the state of West Bengal and a fierce critic of Mr. Modi,
wrote Tuesday on Twitter that the results were a “turning point.”
“This is a victory for
the people and a big defeat for the arrogant and those who are doing political
vendetta & spreading hate among people,” Ms. Banerjee wrote.
Meenakshi Lekhi, a
spokeswoman for Mr. Modi’s party, said the Delhi rout “is a small loss and a
big lesson.”
“We will introspect in
the coming days,” Ms. Lekhi said.
The courtyard of the
Congress party headquarters was nearly deserted on Tuesday but for a few morose
reporters. Ajay Maken, the head of the Delhi campaign, tendered his resignation
Tuesday morning and left. P. C. Chacko, general secretary in charge of the
Delhi elections, sat at his desk sipping tea.
“In fact, we have been
expecting at least a few seats in Delhi,” Mr. Chacko said. “We were really not
prepared. We didn’t have our organization structure intact.”
Outside the gates, a
handful of Congress workers held up pictures of Priyanka Gandhi, the sister of
the party’s leader, and shouted “Bring Priyanka, save Congress.”
“Rahul Gandhi, I’m sorry
to say this, but he is a flop,” said Haseeb Ahmed, 30, a Congress party member
from Allahabad who had traveled to Delhi on Monday with the small group.
But Rashmi Kant, a
Congress leader, said Mr. Gandhi would soon revive the party’s fortunes. “The
Congress is going to come again,” Mr. Kant said.
Suhasini Raj, Hari Kumar
and Nida Najar contributed reporting from New Delhi.
