NEW DELHI: Having lost its last four elections, the Bawana bypoll was a necessary victory for AAP. In fact, celebrations by party volunteers could have made anyone believe that they had won a full election and not a bypoll on a single seat. For chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, what seems to have worked is his change of tactic: he dropped his confrontational stance against the Centre and instead talked about his own government’s work to convince the electorate.
This was evident in the immediate aftermath of the victory. Despite sweeping it, Kejriwal only made a single reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he told volunteers that they needed to go to people and tell them what the state government had achieved in the past 2.5 years. “We have failed to communicate with people about our work. In one constituency, where a road is being made by PWD under my sanction, I was told that BJP is going house to house saying that Modi is getting it done,” he said.
