After Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party has decided to spread its wings to other states as well. The party is learnt to have decided to contest all the seats in the upcoming Assembly elections in Goa. AAP convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal will address a major rally in Goa on May 22.
A highly-placed source in the AAP said after getting an overwhelming response in Punjab, the party decided to contest the Assembly polls in other states as well.
Senior party leaders Sanjay Singh and Ashutosh had made several visits to Goa in the past few months. Surveys conducted by the party for its internal consumption showed that people in Goa were keen to have the AAP as the main contender in the Goa Assembly polls. In the last Lok Sabha elections, the AAP candidates had secured about 15,000 to 20,000 votes in the two Lok Sabha seats in Goa.
Internal surveys by the AAP have reportedly revealed that if the party was able to continue its present momentum till next year’s Assembly elections in Punjab, it was bound to sweep about 100 of the 110 seats in the state. “If the elections are held in the next few weeks, we are going to sweep the Punjab poll,” a senior AAP leader told this newspaper. “But we have to ensure that we continue the present momentum till the Assembly elections.”
The AAP leadership is perhaps worried about the upcoming byelections in 13 municipal wards in Delhi. The party fears that if it fails to sweep the 13 municipal wards, there were chances that the Opposition parties in Punjab may use the results to their advantage, claiming that Delhiites had rejected 15-month governance model of the AAP in the national capital. “That’s precisely why Mr Kejriwal has been advised not to campaign in the municipal bypolls in Delhi. That would give room to the AAP to claim that the bypolls should not be linked with the Delhi government’s performance as the issues concerning the Assembly and civic polls are totally different,” an AAP functionary said.
The AAP had stunned one and all by sweeping 67 of the 70 Assembly seats in Delhi. But the party had failed to register a single victory in any of the seven seats in the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi. “Now, every one is expecting the AAP to repeat its Assembly performance in the municipal bypolls, which is not fair. When we contest all the 272 municipal wards in 2017, then one can adopt this logic. At that time, people would know what we had done in the Delhi government in two-and-a-half years, and what mess the BJP had created in the three municipal bodies in five years.”
