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With the exception of Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, the AAP will preserve the rest of its stellar cast — Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Ashish Khetan et al — for backroom operations in the soon-to-be-held Delhi elections.
Having learnt from the Lok Sabha polls, where the party had “spread itself too thin”, the AAP leadership now believes that besides fielding candidates with credibility, what the party badly needs is people to organise and manage the elections.
“There weren’t enough of us organising and planning the Lok Sabha elections. We are a young party. “It is important for us to hold on to Delhi so we have decided not to field everyone,” said an AAP leader.
How will the AAP find candidates for 90 constituencies?
The party is confident there is “enough talent”. Candidates such as Rakhi Birla and Prof Anand Kumar, who contested the Lok Sabha elections as well, may once again be fielded for the Assembly polls.
Lost ground The AAP believes that it has lost ground since the last Assembly elections among the middle class voters as well as some critical caste groups such as Jats and the Valmikis following incidents of communal violence in the neighbouring Muzaffarnagar and now Trilokpuri and Bawana.
Simmering communal tensions in Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh and now Bawana in Delhi have shifted the Jats entirely to the BJP’s fold.
In Trilokpuri, which has an AAP MLA, the Valmikis too are gravitating towards the BJP.
Besides, the victory momentum of the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls seems to be multiplying with its recent wins in Maharashtra and neighbouring Haryana.
The fact that the BJP did not have a strong chief ministerial candidate in either State, which is also the case in Delhi, did not seem to have impacted the party’s performance.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s enduring appeal among the voters seems to have overtaken all other factors, including leadership troubles in the BJP’s local units.
The AAP’s strongest plank against the BJP in Delhi is that in Kejriwal, it has a better leader than any of the local leaders — be it Harsh Vardhan or Jagdish Mukhi of the BJP.
“Lack of leadership is the BJP’s weakest link in Delhi. They may try to fill it with Modi’s presence but we can counter it. Modi is not going to be Chief Minister of Delhi,” said an AAP leader.
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