"Modi declares emergency in Delhi", "dictatorial Modi govt" and "Isn't Modi govt anti-army": This is how Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Twitter till 11 months ago.
In 2016, he mentioned "Modi" 124 times in his tweets and 33 times in 2017 -- mostly attacking the Prime Minister. Interestingly, since March 9, 2017, when he last tweeted mentioning PM Modi, Kejriwal has not tweeted the word "Modi".
Party leaders and political analysts say the drastic shift happened following AAP's drubbings in elections. The party first lost in Punjab, then Goa and then in Delhi civic polls and a by-election from Rajouri Garden in 2017, reported news agency IANS.
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A data analysis by Hindustan Times last year claimed that between May 2016 and February 2017, Kejriwal’s attacks against Modi peaked on Twitter. On an average, he posted 26 tweets every month during this period mentioning Modi by name.
Not only this, the AAP chief has never tagged PM Modi (@narendramodi) in any of his tweets in 2017 and 2018 so far. In 2016, he tagged the Prime Minister eight times, added IANS.
“If you keep attacking a person who is already popular, people would think you have some kind of an agenda,” said Sanjay Kumar, director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, told HT.
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“In fact, that is the image that Arvind Kejriwal had built—all the time busy attacking Modi, reasonably and unreasonably, which gave him bad press,” he added.
So, the party finally changed the strategy and focused on a “positive campaign” ahead of the Delhi municipal polls in March.
Even when the AAP alleged that its 20 legislators were disqualified at the behest of the BJP government at the Centre, Kejriwal refrained from personally attacking the Prime Minister.
A senior party leader said the "conscious decision" was taken in a meeting that Kejriwal convened after last year's debacle in Delhi civic polls in which the AAP emerged a distant second with 48 seats after the BJP swept the polls by winning 181 seats, reported IANS. The AAP had won the Delhi elections in 2015 by winning 67 out of 70 Assembly seats.
"It is evident that the AAP has lost the trust of the middle class and they need to win back the trust if they have to keep Delhi," Political analyst Neerja Chowdhury said..
Praveen Rai, another political analyst with the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), said: "We have been seeing a much, much more sober Kejriwal. He is growing as a leader and is becoming a seasoned politician. But he has a long way to go."
AAP chief spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj attributed the shift to "a good communication system (that) keeps reinventing itself" and the party follows that idea.
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On Wednesday, as the AAP government celebrated its third anniversary in Delhi , Kejriwal government sought more administrative control over Delhi to run it without the Centre's "interference", even though it is yet to fulfil key poll promises such as providing free Wi-Fi and installing CCTV cameras across the city.
(With PTI inputs)
