Political implications for AAP over Kapil Mishra’s thrashing
There is a funny quote by Tom Blair which wittily sums up politicians across the globe: "Politicians are like diapers. They both need to be changed often. And for the same reason."
This quote is an apt commentary on what happened on Wednesday when Kapil Mishra, the sacked Delhi minister and a suspended member of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was thrashed inside the Delhi Assembly, allegedly by AAP lawmakers.
It’s a weird case of legislators beating up legislators and that too inside the Assembly. But it is a clever tactic too employed by Mishra's assaulters as whatever happens inside a state Assembly has to be dealt with within the Assembly only.
Mishra knows that the most he can get from this incident is free publicity in the media and nothing more as AAP holds brute majority in the 70-member Assembly. However, the incident will inevitably have political implications. Let’s have a 360-degree view of the Kapil Mishra incident from the perspective of various stakeholders.
1. Kapil Mishra: His alleged thrashing inside the Delhi Assembly will at best earn him a few brownie points. The incident won’t trigger existential questions for the AAP; his so-called dossier of evidence of corruption of the Arvind Kejriwal before the CBI will, provided the CBI finds it worthwhile and the courts find it to be legally-admissible evidence.
So, the real game here lies in not how he has been wronged inside and outside the Assembly but what comes out of his corruption allegations against AAP government and leaders in the legal battle that looms ahead.
He is not the lone warrior against Kejriwal but definitely a potent weapon for Kejriwal's political foes – the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), though it’s difficult to tell which of the two parties would gloat more at Kejriwal’s miseries.
His individual goal would be to secure his own political future by joining either the Congress or the BJP – signals are for the latter – and his thrashing doesn’t change the dynamics strictly in this context.
2. The Congress: The grand old party continues to be in the dog house, politically speaking. The past two Delhi Assembly elections and the recent MCD polls demonstrate that AAP has flourished because of a much-weakened Congress while the BJP’S voter base has remained by and large intact.
The Congress needs to walk on the AAP corpse to get back to winning ways just as AAP has won power by walking on the Congress corpse.
Kapil Mishra by himself won’t be the Congress party’s deliverance but the judicial admissibility of his corruption allegations against the AAP leadership will be. Thus, Mishra’s thrashing inside the Delhi Assembly won’t have any impact on the Congress party’s political fortunes. The latter will be much interested in what the CBI does with his allegations and what orders the agency is able to get from the courts.
3. The BJP: AAP leaders have been publicly calling Kapil Mishra a BJP "agent". Despite the high-decibel political war between the BJP and the Kejriwal government through the lieutenant governor and the central agencies, the BJP has not been able to unseat Kejriwal in the past three years.
The BJP has tried all possible tricks to oust Kejriwal from power but it has proven to be a mission impossible for the party that rules the Centre as well as the MCD.
The BJP realises that the success route may go through the courts. If Kapil Mishra’s allegations pass the judicial test, the BJP can have the last laugh. But it’s a long haul. Of course, the BJP must be realising that Mishra made his allegations after he was sacked by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and this important fact is quite a dampener for the courts as well as the all-important public perception.
Mishra may be a valuable Trojan horse for the BJP but his political acceptance within the BJP will get traction only after the courts respond favourably to his charges.
But till that happens, incidents like Mishra getting assaulted in the Assembly will definitely give ammunition to the BJP.