AAP’s falling graph

Iqbal Singh Sidhu 

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Aam Aadmi Party’s rise among Punjabi expatriates was historic, and so has been its downfall. There are about 5 lakh Punjabis living in Canada and conservative estimates put their number at 7 lakh in the US. That’s a total of 12 lakh at least. Now this is more than the total population of any district of Punjab. Besides, monetarily they enjoy a massive advantage, courtesy the high-income economies they live in and a hefty exchange rate for their currency against the Indian rupee. No other political outfit, national or provincial, has utilised this constituency more effectively than AAP. 

  It all started in early 2011. When Manpreet Badal rebelled against his tayaji (Parkash Singh Badal) and formed his separate political outfit, the enthusiasm and hope in Punjab was palpable, but among Punjabi expatriates it was even more overwhelming. Morever, this hope and enthusiasm could not prevent the rout of Manpreet Badal and his party in the 2012 Assembly elections. It also demonstrated for the very first time the power and reach of the Punjabi diaspora, and how eager the community was to cast their lot with a leader who promises the alternative — a change from the two long-established political camps in Punjab.

This alternative was  later provided by Arvind Kejriwal and his AAP and sure enough a large part the Punjabi community in Canada cast their lot with him during the 2014 General Election. While Kejriwal’s party was whitewashed everywhere across India, including his own defeat against Narendra Modi, AAP managed to win four seats from Punjab and lost as many by close margins. No other political event in Punjab has cemented the relevance and necessity of the expatriate community in Punjab’s political landscape like this, before or after.

The AAP wave in North America was in full flow during the period between 2014 and 2016 when it suddenly seemed to peter down. “The reasons are endless, it will take hours for me to give them all,” says Dilawar Chahal, one of the founding members of the AAP Bay Area unit in California. He worked countless hours to set up a party platform in North America. “I had raised money for AAP to the tune of $30,000 and sent it for the party funds, I was never given any official receipt. All I got was an email after five months of waiting.” Dilawar is one of the many who worked tirelessly to set up the party but he and many like him feel they have been betrayed. 

“Money trail leading nowhere definitely hurt us, but what really drove us away from AAP was their candidate selection during the 2017 Assembly elections. We were constantly advising the AAP leadership against selecting some candidates, but no one listened to us, even after all we had done for the party,” says Sukhwant Gill of Toronto. 

Three candidates for AAP during the 2017 election were originally from California and Chahal alleges that all three of them were swindlers who owe people money or have defrauded people. Dalbir Sandhu from Vancouver, another ex-supporter echoes similar sentiments about AAP. “The party is done for, at least here. They don’t even enjoy 10 per cent of the support that they once did, financial or otherwise.”  No matter who you ask, or what town they come from, there is almost a universal sense of cynicism about the party now among its ex-supporters. Stories that some of these ex-supporters tell are extremely unflattering of AAP's top leadership. They feel betrayed and cheated — where there was palpable hope earlier, now it is a pall of pessimism.

For all practical purposes, the foreign support for AAP is dead and, according to some, it has even turned into furious opposition against the party. “Whenever Bhagwant Maan’s contests again, I will send money to his rival candidate. He has betrayed and ill-treated us,” laments Chahal. It looks like AAP will become a passing reference here just like Punjab People’s Party had become some seven years ago. It remains to be seen if there will be concerted effort by the party to regain the lost ground.