THE popular expectations from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Leader Arvind Kejriwal are indeed mammoth – and he had better show results – solid results – both in the short term and in the long term.

If he shows concrete results, he will have a good chance to make inroads in other provinces, especially Punjab where people seem to be fed up with both the Akali Dal and the Congress Party. Indeed, both the parties must already be shaken up there.

The common man is terribly frustrated with corruption and the fact that the BJP got brutally whipped in Delhi itself shows that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his rightwing Hindu nationalist party have not inspired the kind of hope they were widely expected to.

Kejriwal’s inspirational victory (his party won 67 of the 70 seats) is a clear warning to Modi and his fellow party members to watch their actions and words, especially regarding religious matters – something that U.S, President Barack Obama has also warned them about. Modi, who feels overwhelmingly beholden to the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) for his victory, remains reluctant to speak out, though I am sure he has been cautioning the RSS bosses discreetly to warn their members to cool it.

THE AAP victory is also a loud and clear warning to Congress Party boss Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, who has proved such a miserable failure in politics, to give their heads a good shake and make drastic changes in the way they have been running the party. The AAP’s runaway victory is being attributed to Congress supporters switching to that party.

I think the Congress needs to bring in Priyanka Gandhi as the new future leader, as I have advocated many times over the past years. After the Congress Party’s defeat last May, I wrote:

“Back in January of 2013 I suggested in a write-up that the Congress should make Priyanka Gandhi Vadra the prime minister-in-waiting by getting her into the Rajya Sabha (India’s House of Lords) while Rahul could take over his mom’s Sonia Gandhi’s position as president of the Congress Party. Sonia could remain the real boss behind the scenes.

“I noted back then that Rahul had proved to be an utter failure and what the Congress Party desperately needed was a charismatic figure like Priyanka who bears quite a resemblance to her grandmother Indira Gandhi.

“I also noted that I could understand Sonia’s predicament in projecting her daughter as the next prime minister, but that Rahul should realize the reality of the situation himself and urge his mother to do so.

“Well now it’s even more obvious that the Congress MUST dump Rahul who proved to be a terribly weak personality while Priyanka won admiration for the way she hit back at BJP leader Narendra Modi during the election campaign, mocking him and providing a sliver of hope to the beleaguered Congress Party.

“I see the same defiance in her that I saw while covering Indira Gandhi shortly after she had suffered a humiliating defeat in 1977 just after the hated Emergency Rule.

“ … Priyanka, I believe, has that same personality and defiance to revive the demoralized Congress Party once again.”