April 18, 2026

Gujarat: AAP Playing For Presence And Vote Share

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-11-05 06:24:53

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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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After a reported 16 lakh responses received over SMS and WhatsApp in a public poll (like the one the party conducted before the Punjab polls), the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has declared that Isudan Gadhvi, former journalist-turned-politician, will be its candidate for the post of chief minister in Gujarat if the party wins the elections. The decision was not well received by at least one section of the party in the state. National joint secretary of the party Indranil Rajyaguru, who has good clout in the Saurashtra region and was instrumental in the party getting a foothold there, resigned from the primary membership of the party and rejoined the Congress giving a severe jolt to the party in its campaign.

AAP has been running a high-profile campaign in Gujarat (although most observers see its campaign as urban-centric and unlikely to yield immediate results) with Arvind Kejriwal making frequent visits to the state. It is clear that AAP is playing for vote share and presence this time around and is not a serious contender. AAP is trying to muscle-in in a state that is known to vote for either the BJP or the Congress. It feels that with the Congress losing the faith of the people, there is scope for a third party to corner the votes of disgruntled Congress voters. Opinion polls also reflect this with opposition votes getting divided between AAP and Congress and some polls even predicting that AAP will pip the Congress in vote share. But when it comes to winning seats, most polls predict that the BJP will sweep the polls and AAP is going to be a distant third.

Despite Kejriwal's upbeat statements that Gujarat is ready for change, AAP does not have the infrastructure in the state to take on the well-oiled election machinery of the BJP or even the well-entrenched one of the Congress. Now, after Rajyaguru's exit, it will have to face dissensions in the state unit. Its effort to be more Hindu than the BJP is likely to backfire as it takes away its USP of being a party with a difference. For AAP, Gujarat 2022 is an experiment and it is likely to be happy if it scoops up enough Congress votes to make it relevant in the state in the 2024 general elections and the state elections in 2027.