Delhi Poll Jolt: INDIA Bloc Needs to Put up Joint Resistance

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory in the 2025 Delhi Assembly elections, marking its return to power after 27 years, signifies a critical shift in the city’s political landscape. While the party mobilised its disproportionate resources, this victory also highlights the problems facing Opposition parties, particularly the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Indian National Congress (INC), both of whom are part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) Bloc.  

AAP’s governance in Delhi largely centred around welfare policies, such as subsidised electricity, free water, mohalla clinics, and improved school education infrastructure.  

These governance measures were countered by the BJP-led Union Government. Since 2014, the Union government has been on a permanent mission to undermine the federal elements of the Constitution, whereby the office of the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor doubles up as not only the fulcrum of the political opposition to non-BJP state governments, but also places significant hurdles to the functioning of these governments. The absence of full statehood for Delhi made this task of undermining the functioning of the Delhi government less involved, notwithstanding judicial pronouncements to the contrary.  

Besides, the organs of the Union Government were deployed to file cases, ostensibly involving corruption, against leading figures of AAP, leading to the incarceration of these leaders for varying tenures. But no judicially acceptable evidence of guilt has been provided till now.  

However, the BJP’s campaign disproportionately focused on the presumption of guilt that incarceration in corruption cases tends to generate. This presumption was, not unexpectedly, amplified by the in-house ‘Godi media’, resulting in a certain undermining of the political reputation of AAP, especially among its “middle class” voters. This was possible also because the AAP did not mount a significant grassroots campaign to counter this narrative constructed by BJP.  

Moreover, the widespread targeting of minorities and other socially oppressed strata, increased communal rhetoric, and the use of dog-whistle politics by the neo-fascist dispensation have been normalised, since both AAP and INC in Delhi are unwilling to resist this frontally.  

The neo-fascist dispensation’s malign influence over various state institutions has adversely impacted the electoral process in the country. There are widespread concerns about the integrity of the electoral process in various states of India, including Delhi.  

A fundamental political failing of the AAP in Delhi was its failure to counter the entire gamut of the neo-fascist agenda. The AAP’s silence as regards the anti-constitutional dimensions of this neo-fascist agenda—including opposition to secularism, undermining of federalism, foreign policy that compromised strategic autonomy, and economic policy centred around its corporate cronies—resulted in its being positioned both as a ‘soft Hindutva’ party and a party that is at best suited for regional governance (whereby even non-BJP voters shift toward the INC in Lok Sabha elections when AAP and INC contest separately). Why did this happen?  

One proximate cause emerges from a perusal of voting trends in Delhi. Party-wise vote share data in Delhi, for the last decade, indicate that a chunk of voters alternate between BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi and AAP in the Delhi Assembly elections.  

In the Delhi Assembly Elections of 2015, AAP won a landslide, securing 67 out of 70 seats with 54.3% of the vote. The BJP managed only three seats with 32.2%.  

In the Delhi General (Lok Sabha) Elections of 2019, BJP swept all seven Lok Sabha seats with 56.86% of the vote, while AAP and INC, contesting separately, trailed at 18.11% and 22.51%, respectively.  

In 2020, AAP retained power with 62 seats in the Assembly elections but saw a slight decline in vote share (53.57%). The BJP improved its numbers to eight seats, gaining a vote share of 38.51%.   

In 2024, the BJP once again retained all seven seats in the Lok Sabha elections, despite a slight drop in vote share to 54.35%. AAP’s vote share rose to 24.17%, while Congress declined to 18.91%. AAP and INC contested as part of the INDIA Bloc.  

In 2025, the BJP made a comeback, winning 48 seats with a 45.56% vote share—an increase of approximately 7 percentage points in the Assembly elections. AAP’s vote share fell to 43.57%, leading to a reduced seat count of 22.  

In other words, the AAP’s lack of courage with respect to the neo-fascist agenda was meant to try and retain this chunk of alternating voters in Assembly elections. This may have worked partially in the short run.  

What is also evident is that alternation of this chunk of voters between BJP in the Lok Sabha elections and AAP in the Assembly elections became less significant, with a rising fraction of this chunk remaining with BJP in all elections.  

In other words, over time, the hegemony of neo-fascism, due in part to the cowardice of AAP, undermined the extent of this alternation, resulting in the defeat of AAP in the Delhi Assembly elections of 2025. Neo-fascism cannot be persistently combated through soft Hindutva.  

A fundamental factor behind the setback in the 2025 Delhi Assembly elections was the inability of the INDIA Bloc parties to contest together. In 13 seats, the combined vote share of the AAP and INC exceeded that of  BJP. Had they contested together, this would have resulted in 35 seats out of 70 in the Delhi Assembly.  

The on-off nature of the unity of AAP and INC in the INDIA Bloc emerges from a basic lack of understanding of the gravity of the challenge posed by the neo-fascist dispensation to India, including other political parties. Seemingly, some sections within these parties wrongly surmise that any persistent political alliance within the framework of the INDIA Bloc would tactically disadvantage them politically in the future.

While it is evident that there are (and will remain) contradictions between INDIA Bloc parties, the persistence of the neo-fascist dispensation has the potential to upend the political party system, among other facets of the Constitution, not least through political re-engineering, as has happened in Maharashtra, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, etc.  

The failure of the INC, the leading party in the INDIA Bloc in Haryana, to enter into an alliance with AAP in the Assembly elections was a factor in its narrow defeat. This also allowed the BJP to portray the INC as a party ostensibly dominated by one caste and confined to the rural areas of the state. The mishandling of factors internal to the INC in Haryana also contributed to the defeat. 

The AAP’s dastardliness with respect to the neo-fascist dispensation, fortified by the failure of an alliance in Haryana, resulted in AAP and INC fighting separately in the Delhi Assembly elections, which allowed BJP to make a comeback.  

The 2025 Delhi Assembly elections serve as a crucial lesson for the Opposition. If the INDIA Bloc continues to operate in a fragmented manner, BJP will further entrench its hold, not just in Delhi but across India. What alternative course is available to the INDIA Bloc?  

First, AAP and INC need to frontally combat all dimensions of the neo-fascist dispensation, including livelihood issues of the working people, shedding their past pusillanimity in this regard.  

Second, drawing a cue from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led INDIA Bloc in Tamil Nadu, the INDIA Bloc elsewhere, too, must craft a comprehensive alliance that spans all types of elections as well as political mobilisation. The experience of Maharashtra demonstrates that this unity is possible even among INDIA Bloc parties that are not too dissimilar in organisational strength and electoral support.  

Third, drawing from the experience of INDIA Bloc parties outside North India, the INDIA Bloc parties need to raise and allocate resources to independent media and alternative platforms to challenge the ‘Godi Media’.  

Fourth, the INDIA Bloc needs to work with other like-minded political and social organisations on a continuous basis to craft an effectively organised resistance to the neo-fascist dispensation that is not episodic but persistent.  

The incoming BJP government in Delhi will seek to undermine the achievements of the outgoing Delhi government in instituting a fair modicum of social welfare for the working people. This is likely to take the form of a squeeze on the working people but applied differentially (evidenced for instance by the recent stampede in the New Delhi railway station and its maliciously inept handling) to try and prevent unified resistance. The INDIA Bloc parties in Delhi must be at the forefront of resisting this manoeuvre of the neo-fascist dispensation.  

Shirin Akhter is Associate Professor at Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi. C Saratchand is Professor, Department of Economics, Satyawati College, University of Delhi. The views are personal.