With Kejriwal’s resignation, Delhi goes into campaign mode. Hopefully, polls will lead to normal govt Last time Kejriwal resigned as CM, he returned to office with a landslide win. Much water, and waste, has flown in the Yamuna since.
Over it, hangs almost a decade’s worth of anti-incumbency. This can’t simply be wished away by replaying the resignation card. But yesterday, in dramatically waving it around once again, Kejriwal conveyed, first of all, that jail hasn’t made him cautious.
Second, it was a call to electoral arms to AAP workers, upon whom too the last few months have weighed heavy. It was about energising them – albeit with a clear understanding that ‘high command’ will continue to be in charge whoever it anoints as the ‘interim’ CM. Hemant Soren and Nitish Kumar have found the business of retrieving CMship from the placeholders of their choosing, to be messy.
These skirmishes will be remembered by Kejriwal, as he makes his calculations. But his situation is also distinctive. Not only did he accrue political and then executive capital on a loud anti-corruption platform, this still remains the core AAP identity and draw, at least by his own accounting yesterday.
That is why the pitch that Kejriwal will return to CM’s office only after getting a “certificate of honesty” from the electorate, makes sense as political strategy. Whether BJP’s label of “PR stunt” or the Kejriwal pitch proves more sticky will be a measure of how robust Brand .