The results of the assembly elections of five states were declared on March 10. Punjab is the most talked about after the results because the Aam Aadmi Party has got an absolute majority there. AAP has come to power in Punjab for the first time. In such a situation, try to understand what is the meaning of this victory of yours. Here we will try to understand, keeping focus only on the assembly elections, how the Aam Aadmi Party is becoming a bigger threat to the Congress than the BJP.
Let’s start from 2008 Delhi Assembly
This was the first time that the Aam Aadmi Party participated in the assembly elections. AAP got 28 seats for the first time in the 70-seat Delhi Assembly. Hung assembly was formed. Congress supported AAP from outside but even after that the government could not run. Re-elections were held in 2015. Now AAP has got a government of absolute majority. AAP won 67 out of 70 seats. This was the assembly election when the account of Congress was not even opened in Delhi. It was the same Congress party which was running the government till 2013 with 43 MLAs.
If you do more, you will see that there was not much change in the vote percentage of BJP in the 2013 and 2015 assembly elections. BJP got 33 percent votes in 2013 and 32.5 in 2015 but the condition of Congress went from bad to worse. The Congress, which got more than 40 per cent votes in 2008, fell below 25 in 2013 and below 10 in 2015. Talking about the 2020 assembly elections, the Congress could not even get 5.5 percent of the vote.
Political experts believe that the Aam Aadmi Party has taken the traditional votes of the Congress in its favour. Congress voters are seen going towards AAP instead of BJP.
Now about Punjab
For the first time in 2015, the Aam Aadmi Party contested the Punjab Assembly elections. Earlier, the party had contested several seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in several states but lost everywhere except a few seats in Punjab. In Punjab, the party got 24.4 percent of the votes and the party won 4 seats. Experts believe that this was the main reason why AAP came to fight in Punjab in 2017.
Now let’s talk about 2017. In the 2017 assembly elections, AAP won 20 out of 117 seats and emerged as the major opposition party. Shiromani Akali Dal could get only 18 seats. The Congress formed the government under the leadership of Captain Amarinder Singh by winning 77 seats. Then came the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. AAP could win only one seat and the vote percentage also came down to below 8.