ABSTRACT

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a new political party formed in 2012 by young activists in New Delhi from the India Against Corruption movement, has taken the regional politics of India by storm. Beginning as an unknown party that could manage only an insignificant victory in the 2014 general election in four constituencies of Punjab, AAP first rose to become the state’s principal opposition in 2017, and in 2022 the party’s performance was spectacular as it won a huge 92 out of 117 seats to form a government in the state legislature. This study analyses in a comprehensive way the party’s rise and consolidation in one of India’s key political battlegrounds — the state of Punjab — and situates it within the context of the state’s earlier two-party political system, the Shiromani Akali Dal’s (SAD) decline (due mainly to the 2015 sacrilege incidents), and the anti-incumbency accumulated by the Indian National Congress. In the process it examines the welfare initiatives of the state government headed by the AAP leader and former Member of Parliament from Sangrur, Bhagwant Mann — such as the expansion of Aam Aadmi Clinics, subsidised electricity to the poor, and the launch of a Health Insurance Scheme — as well as the ₹1,000-per-month payment to women, promised in 2022 and finally rolled out from 2026. These welfare measures are counterbalanced by a substantial increase in public debt, an intensifying drug-trafficking problem, the lack of progress on sacrilege-related prosecutions, and public dissatisfaction with the party’s centralised, Delhi-based decision-making.

Keywords: Aam Aadmi Party; Punjab politics; Bhagwant Mann; anti-incumbency; regional party system; populism; 2022 Punjab Assembly election.

1. INTRODUCTION

Until Punjab’s reorganisation in 1966, elections in the state were fought mainly between the Shiromani Akali Dal — usually allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party — and the Indian National Congress. This settled picture was upended when the Aam Aadmi Party entered the political scene in an unexpected way: founded in Delhi in November 2012, it had no prior connection to Punjab’s politics of religion, caste, or land, nor any organisational base in the state. Within about ten years, AAP successfully claimed four of the state’s thirteen Lok Sabha seats (2014), became the principal opposition (2017), and then, after March 2022, under Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, won 92 of the assembly’s 117 seats — the most decisive victory in Punjab’s electoral history. This is analytically significant for three reasons. Firstly, Punjab is the only state besides Delhi where AAP has formed a government, which raises the question of whether its ‘Delhi model’ of welfare provision can be replicated in a very different fiscal and security environment. Second, factors such as the border with Pakistan, the farming crisis, and a political history of militancy and religious sacrilege make Punjab an especially challenging state for parties with a national template, since local pressures often do not respond well to templates built elsewhere. Lastly, AAP’s trajectory from 2022 onward — an overwhelming election win that left little room for the opposition, followed by contested budget decisions, a resurgent Congress, and a national-level AAP weakened by its 2025 Delhi defeat — is a useful case study of how a party born of a protest movement manages the transition from popularity rooted in agitation to the sustained work of governance.