In the Delhi elections concluded in Dec 2013 the results were surprising, if not shocking. Congress that was having a comfortable majority with 43 seats in 2008 was reduced to a single digit number (8 to be precise), but this was on the expected lines and absolutely no one was surprised by it. BJP+ that got 23 seats in 2008 was up by 9 scoring a total of 32 (4 short of a majority). One seat went to JDU and one to an independent candidate. The surprise was a new political party Aam Aadmi Party, that came in the arena very recently, got the second highest umber of seats (28). AAP’s rise was definitely unprecedented. The assembly was hung as none of the 3 big groups, namely congress, BJP and APP, were not ready to support any other. The media, and many people also, were very much overwhelmed by the success of AAP and they started getting much airtime. Interestingly, after some initial discussions ,which were tripartite, the discussions were going more and more bipartite. Congress was falling back and the discussions were going BJP v/s AAP. I am not trying to create some sense out of those 99% nonsense discussions, but someone saw a definite opportunity in this.
The Queen (Sonia Gandhi) who must be noticing all the development and was definitely upset not just by the disaster in Delhi (and 3 other states namely Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan), but also by the prospective, or should I say eminent, disaster in the 2014 general elections. She noticed an opportunity. If somehow AAP and BJP could be made to fight each other more, the anti-congress sentiments that are “omnipresent” in the country right now, will be divided in 2 parts; and that division will offer a better chance of victory for Congress. But as AAP was fighting majorly against Congress in Delhi, it was not easy to turn the fight AAP v/s BJP. So, Congress decided to support AAP’s claim to for government formation in Delhi. Now if the AAP govt in Delhi achieves some success, Congress will claim some goodwill from it. And if they fail and government reaches a fall, Congress will still have some goodwill as they tried to avoid the re-elections. Moreover it was quite understandable that AAP, riding on the success of Delhi assembly polls, will go national. So even for general elections, it was very much important to be seen on AAP’s side for some cause. Now if you analyse the national media and social media it will very much evident that the fight is going on between AAP and BJP, and Congress is basically playing a no profit-no loss position. Thanks to media and social network trolls, the Congress’s plan to somehow get AAP and BJP to fight each other has worked for now. By sacrificing a pawn (Delhi state) congress has achieved a position where it is now expecting to gain in the general elections.
The Delhi events remind me on the dialogue in the Prakash Jha movie Raajneeti, appropriated very well by Nana Patekar. “Rajneeti me faisle sahi ya galat nahi hote… unka mol to bas maqsad pura karne ke liye hota hai. Chahe jaise bhi ho.”
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2.(in chess) an opening move in which a player makes a sacrifice, typically of a pawn, for the sake of a compensating advantage.“he tried the dubious Budapest gambit”
Thinking aloud 