Aam Aadmi Party stands compromised today

''Tum bilkul hum jaisey nikley, voh moorkhta, voh ghaamarpan, aakhir pahunchi dwaar tumhaarey", Fehmida Riaz, an Urdu poet, wrote this in the '80s in a vastly different context, but today, this extract from her poem rings true of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Irrespective of which faction triumphed, the fact is that the AAP's  USP of being a party with a difference, of being a party that practised an alternative brand of politics, stands compromised.

Like Rajiv Gandhi in 1984 and the Janata Dal, AAP came to power on the promise of providing a different brand of politics. One in which there would be transparency, inner party democracy, and place for a contrarian view. In the case of Rajiv Gandhi, it took two years for the promise to fade away, and in the case of the JD, contradictions engulfed it within a matter of few months. The unravelling of the AAP has been much quicker - five weeks to be precise. And like Rajiv Gandhi's Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party government will remain in power, but its credibility and goodwill have begun to dissipate and this could prove to be costly for the party in the long term.

Rajiv Gandhi won a stupendous 413 seats in the 1984 Lok Sabha elections, a feat unparalleled in India's electoral history. He promised change, promised to rid the Congress of power brokers

Arvind Kejriwal, too, enjoys a brute majority and has the support of 67 of the 70 MLAs in the Delhi Assembly, hence there is no danger to the stability or the longevity of his government. However, the manner in which the Aam Aadmi Party has handled the Prashant Bhushan-Yogendra Yadav episode has severely damaged its credibility. Politics is also about public perception and given the high handedness, and the way in which two of the founding members along with their supporters have been hounded out has begun to make people wonder if this party is at all any different from other established ones.    

Arvind Kejriwal and his supporters might have won their factional battle with Bhushan and Yadav, but AAP's goodwill and uniqueness and its claim of being different from other political parties, stands compromised. And unless things change drastically, in the long run, it could end up being a short-lived experiment .