AAP: Going Into Overdrive
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-04-07 06:46:36
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
View all posts by this Author
After its landmark victory in Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party is making a bid to win other states which it has focused on. Starting with Gujarat, where the party held a roadshow in Ahmedabad a few days ago with party chief and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann leading the affair, the party held another roadshow in the Mandi town of Himachal Pradesh yesterday. AAP names them 'Tiranga Rallies' and party workers carry the national flag to whip up patriotic fervor.
Both the rallies were well attended making Kejriwal extremely happy and confident. That is one of the reasons why the party wants to hold rallies now as it knows there is a buzz around AAP after its big win in Punjab. He showcases the Delhi model of governance with its emphasis on service delivery, making government departments corruption-free and focusing on health and education. At the Himachal rally, he also claimed that Punjab has been made corruption-free in just 20 days. Kejriwal is now relying on word-of-mouth publicity as he repeatedly exhorts people attending these rallies to call their relatives in Delhi and Punjab to verify what he claims.
It is now clear that AAP is trying to occupy the Congress space in national politics. In the recent elections in five states, it did so well in Punjab and tried to do it in Goa and Uttarakhand with limited success. Now it is trying the same in Gujarat and Himachal, with Haryana, Rajasthan and Karnataka next on the agenda. For the time being it is avoiding direct conflict with regional parties.
But all is not going well for the party. After the roadshow in Gujarat, nearly 100 mid-level leaders from the party switched sides and joined the BJP. Also, the Punjab assembly's resolution demanding immediate transfer of Chandigarh to the state is likely to hamper the party's prospects in Haryana. Kejriwal said in the Himachal rally that AAP does not know politics, it just knows to work, rooting out corruption and patriotism. But as AAP tries to expand its footprint, it will have to learn politics too as elections in India are as much about performance and track record as about managing a huge number of electoral issues that involve dirty politics.
