New Delhi: ( Ajoy Kumr Misra) in 2020 Delhi polls, most exit polls got their predictions wrong. Those went wrong in the Lok Sabha elections and, more recently, in the Haryana Assembly polls too.
Even as most exit polls on Wednesday predicted a sweep for the BJP in the Delhi Assembly elections and only three project AAP’s return to power, the biggest question now is whether former Delhi chief Minister Arbind Kejriwal will rise or be decimated by the Bhartiya Janata Party and Narendra Modi wave.
Only two pollster agencies have showed a close contest while many showed that Congress may open its account, after drawing a blank in the 2020 elections.
The stakes have never been higher for Kejriwal than in 2025. The AAP supremo is the prime focus of the current assembly election in Delhi. Much has changed since he broke into the political scene in 2013. The man who was then seen as the very embodiment of the ‘aam aadmi’ is today being projected as anything but.
The trademark muffler that had become the stuff of many a Kejriwal meme and parody has been replaced by a green GANT jacket. He claims this can be bought for Rs 2,500 in Chandni Chowk but the actual cost is much more if original.
His arch-rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is accusing him of having converted the chief minister’s residence into a “Sheesh Mahal”, or a gilded glass palace.
Internal rifts, high-profile defections and criticism over its governance model have shaken AAP’s foundation, making Kejriwal’s a fight not just against his opponents but also one for his very political survival. The AAP leader has to battle not just the ghost of anti-incumbency but also the severe dent to his old image as an anti-corruption crusader.
The hardest blow came when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested him in March 2024 for his alleged involvement in a multi-crore money-laundering liquor policy scam and sent to judicial custody, the first ever sitting chief minister to face that fate.
