AAP Misses A Hat-Trick, Congress Scores One -- 3 Ducks In A Row

Three hours into counting day, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) appears to have missed a hat-trick victory in Delhi. But the Congress is set to score a hat-trick, albeit an unflattering one. If the current numbers hold, this would be the third consecutive Delhi election in which the Congress failed to open its account. The party drew a blank in 2015 and 2020 and is not leading in even one of the 70 Delhi Assembly seats. It is also a hat-trick of defeats for the Congress after its losses in Haryana and Maharashtra. 

Months after it contested the Lok Sabha election last year in an alliance with AAP, the Congress decided to go solo this time. The campaign for the capital contest showed the two former allies trade sharp barbs.

The Congress's Supriya Shrinate has said it is not the Grand Old Party's responsibility to ensure AAP's victory. The party has blamed Mr Kejriwal's "megalomaniac" tendencies for burning bridges between the two allies. It has also pointed to AAP's hard bargaining during the Haryana elections. The AAP, on the other hand, has accused the Congress of speaking the BJP's language and traded bitter insults with its former ally in the run-up to the election.

In the larger context, the Congress has been cornered within the INDIA Opposition bloc. In the days leading to the polls, key Opposition parties such as Samajwadi Party and the Trinamool Congress put their weight behind the Arvind Kejriwal-led party. Following the Congress debacles in Haryana and Maharashtra elections, calls for a leadership change in the Opposition alliance have also grown louder. The Delhi setback will only make things worse for the Congress as it struggles to get a foothold in politically significant states.

The Congress's Delhi wipeout also needs to be seen against the backdrop that the party ruled Delhi till 2013 under the leadership of the late Sheila Dikshit, considered one of the most popular Delhi Chief Ministers. From 43 seats in 2008 polls, the party was reduced to eight seats in 2013. And 2015 onwards, it failed to win a single seat.