The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) winning the most number of seats in the Chandigarh civic polls – a city administered by the Centre and ruled either by the Congress or BJP through the years — came as a huge surprise.
While AAP scooped up 14 seats in Monday’s Chandigarh poll results, the BJP came second with 12, and the Congress won in only eight wards. The Akali Dal won in a single seat.
It would seem that the AAP’s Delhi model of governance has gained popularity in Chandigarh. At the BJP’s behest in 2020, the water tariff in the city was increased by 200 times – a major reason for massive discontent about the saffron party’s city governance. One of the key promises of AAP was to provide free water up to 20,000 litres to each Chandigarh family, every month.
The BJP had basically swept the municipal polls in 2016 on the Modi Wave. But the party policies, like high waste collection charges, hiked water tariff and increased property tax rates in the last five years gave rise to brewing discontent and led to a strong anti-incumbency in the Chandigarh wards. Especially in colony areas, high expenditure required to avail basic amenities was a constant issue.
Chandigarh, a city known for its open areas, was facing an acute space crunch for parking. As the space crunch worsened, parking charges were also hiked.
In 2016, Chandigarh was voted the second cleanest city in the country. By 2021, the city dropped down to the 66th position — and residents have long been upset over the city’s poor performance in cleanliness. The BJP councillors paid hardly any attention to a proper mechanism for waste disposal or processing, with garbage being piled up at Dadumajra.
The ‘cleanest city’ tag was an important poll issue. With that no longer being the case, the discontent became even more widespread.
Before these civic polls, many BJP candidates were trying to bank upon the Modi wave while campaigning. AAP candidates, on the other hand, even being newcomers, focussed on local issues and connected with voters, reaching out to residents and promising to bring about a change in the system if voted to power.
The BJP’s hackneyed appeals aligning with the Hindutva ideology, and campaign slogans like ‘Jai Shri Ram’ quickly became irrelevant. And to hammer the final nails into the Chandigarh BJP’s coffin came the second wave of Covid-19. Voters felt that they did not get the desired assistance from public representatives, when the demand for hospital beds and medical oxygen spiked during April-May 2021.
