Delhi election 2025: Congress sniffs victory in AAP’s defeat | India News

NEW DELHI: Early Saturday, Congress MP Manickam Tagore posted on X a two-word comment – “Delhi Results”, with a video of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal nonchalantly announcing “there will be no tie-up in Delhi”. Clearly, Tagore was least bothered about Congress’s performance, and instead was looking forward to AAP’s defeat.
Unlike the debacles in Haryana and Maharashtra that had Congress racking its brains, the Delhi decimation had the party on a happy trip; the hat-trick of zeroes in Delhi incongruous with the mood of celebration.

But Congress was bent on Kejriwal’s defeat, and only as a secondary objective looking to garner some votes. The strategists had decided that Congress could think of reviving only after AAP was ousted from office, which they concluded would also mark the end of the country’s experiment with “new politics” that grew at the cost of Congress.
Kejriwal represented a nettlesome problem because he, having built a party on the ruins of Congress, was now an ally, which was further cramping its space. Also, AAP was a constant irritant in other states where it pitched an independent tent and hurt Congress both in terms of votes and atmospherics. The 2022 Congress debacle in Gujarat was the handiwork of AAP’s solo run.
It was a sharp turn from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls when AAP and Congress struck a pan-India alliance.
Congress insiders say Rahul Gandhi had urged the party to explore a tie-up with AAP in Haryana, but a willing AAP changed its tune after Kejriwal’s release from prison. The continuous pinpricks from AAP rankled Congress which, resentful after defeats, felt it needed to go for radical action.
AAP’s ouster is interpreted, in the long-term, as the road to revert the local Delhi fight to bipolarity of “Congress vs BJP”. As much as Kejriwal was a complicating factor outside Delhi, especially AAP-governed Punjab, his defeat is a source of additional reassurance.
But it was a big political trap. With its fortunes having gone south after LS polls, AAP’s victory in spite of Congress’s belligerent campaign would have made Congress look ineffectual, and reinforced the growing belief that the grand old party was a drag on the INDIA bloc, which is being pulled by regional parties. As a senior strategist said, “Nobody would have taken Congress seriously, if AAP had won.”
Kejriwal has presented a strange riddle for Congress. The man rode the Anna Hazare disruption, and the appeal of his “new politics” overnight ousted the unshakeable Congress from Delhi, a feat that BJP could not achieve in 15 years. He then went on to embarrass Congress in Punjab in 2022.
But as Kejriwal’s fortunes took a plunge, he forced his way into the INDIA bloc and literally arm-twisted Congress into accepting a national alliance for the 2024 LS polls. With Congress netas incessantly squirming at the concessions for AAP, the Congress brass finally decided that challenging Kejriwal in Delhi was the only way to put the problem to rest.
On Saturday, the payback was bang on target.