MCD Micro Edit: MCD election results a litmus test for AAP

The results of the municipal corporation elections will be a litmus test for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which stormed to power in Delhi only two years ago, winning 67 out of 70 seats. The poll results, however, can effectively be read as the report card of Arvind Kejriwal's two-year rule rather than the Bharatiya Janata Party's decade-long non-performance at the helm of the civic body.

In short, it's the moment of truth for the AAP. If the party gets a sizeable number of seats in the 270 wards up for grabs, then the revolt brewing within the party can be muzzled, but if it loses, it will be Kejriwal's leadership that will come in for questioning. The election is also important as it comes on the heels of the party's abysmal failure to convince electorates in Punjab and Goa that it was a viable alternative. The result of the Rajouri Garden bypolls — which fell vacant earlier this year when AAP's Jarnail Singh quit to contest the Punjab Assembly elections against SAD partriarch Parkash Singh Badal, and lost — was also a lesson for the party. Not only did the party end up in third position in the bypoll, Singh also lost his security deposit. Both the BJP and the Congress had claimed that the result was the beginning of the end of the "newbie" in Delhi politics. If the party fails in the corporation polls, too, what will remain is an oversize question mark on AAP's survival.