An Era of Darkness: How No Data Helps the BJP’s Politics; AAP’s Delhi Loss Has its Punjab Unit Worried; Biren Singh’s Resignation is Like Sacrificing a Pawn to Save the King

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

February 10, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

While the BJP’s decision to frustrate the AAP as a party as well as its government – with its ordinance relating to civil servants in the capital, its using ‘aldermen’ in the AAP-majority municipal corporation and the jailing of AAP leaders in the Delhi excise policy case – did contribute to its 7 percentage point jump in vote share, what majorly did the AAP in was its “reluctance to channel itself towards an ideological direction that distinguished it from the BJP”, Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta writes. This deprived the party of the kind of “emotional and moral appeal” it commanded during the anti-corruption movement. There is also the fact that the BJP toned down its communal narrative in favour of a more welfarist posturing this time.

Between the 2020 assembly elections in Delhi and the general elections last year, there was a net addition of 4,16,648 voters to Delhi’s electoral roll. But just in the time period between the general elections and the assembly elections held last week an estimated 3,99,362 people were added to the list, Himanshi Dahiya notes. She also finds that in the New Delhi assembly seat – where Arvind Kejriwal lost to the BJP’s Parvesh Verma – there was