Party won’t contest seats where it will split anti-BJP votes.
New Delhi: Unlike in 2014, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is going to contest only from states like Haryana, Punjab, and Goa on all the seats, apart from Delhi, in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, according to a senior AAP leader. The party will also contest in the lone seat from Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In 2014, AAP had contested in over 400 seats across the country.
Somnath Bharti, senior leader and AAP spokesperson, said, “We will be contesting only on those seats where the organisation is strong. As of now, we have decided to contest in all these states and Union Territory (Andaman and Nicobar Islands) on all the seats. We are not going to contest on all seats like we did in 2014; we have carefully studied and strategised ourselves better this time. We have taken a conscious decision to refrain from contesting all those seats where we will act as vote splitter for the anti-BJP votes. However, we are also receiving requests from other states. We will study them and take a decision on them later.”
In Haryana, the AAP will contest on all the 10 Lok Sabha seats and the party is likely to go alone in these 10 seats, as an alliance with the Congress and Dushyant Chautala’s JJP (Jannayak Janata Party) remained unsuccessful, according to senior leader of AAP in Haryana.
Sources in AAP’s Haryana unit have also said that the party had been in touch with the JJP to forge an alliance, but a formal alliance could not materialise between these two parties due to differences arising over the seat sharing issue. The AAP had also tried to approach the Congress, but did not get any response from the Congress unit in Haryana.
Earlier this week, even AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal had once again appealed to the Congress and the JJP to form an alliance. Kejriwal has said that if this alliance materialises, it can win all the 10 seats in Haryana. However, the AAP is likely to declare its list of candidates from Haryana by 20 March. As for Goa, AAP is going to contest on both the North Goa and South Goa seats in the coastal state.
Elvis Gomes, who was AAP’s declared Chief Ministerial candidate from Goa in 2017, will contest from the South Goa seat, while Pradeep Padgaonkar has been chosen as AAP’s candidate for the North Goa seat. The AAP had contested on all the 40 seats in the Assembly elections held in Goa in 2017, but did not win a single seat from the state and had secured 6.3% of the total votes polled.
However, Elvis Gomes, the South Goa candidate, is confident of winning this time. Talking to The Sunday Guardian over telephone from Goa, Gomes said, “Two years of ‘joint rule’ by the BJP and Congress has shown that they are two sides of the same coin. I say ‘joint rule’ because Congress supported the BJP in formation of the government. Congress leader Luizinho Faleiro is on record saying that the party high command prevented them from forming the government.” “Both the behemoths have over the years caused immense damage to our environment and culture. They have not shown any semblance of governance. We will pitch for the protection of whatever is left of our identity by making the right noises at the national level,” Gomes added.
The AAP also believes that the support for the party has increased immensely in the last two years due to the presence of booth level workers in every booth in the state.
In Punjab, the AAP will once again contest all the 13 Lok Sabha seats from the state. It was only in Punjab that the AAP had won four seats out of all the 400 seats it contested in 2014 across the country. AAP had also secured 24.4% of the total vote share in the state.
However, this time, AAP is trying to forge an alliance with the dissident group of the Akalis and is hopeful that an alliance with them would be stitched before the state goes to polls on 19 May.
Harpal Singh, senior AAP leader and Leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly, told The Sunday Guardian, “AAP will contest on all the seats here in Punjab and we are trying to build an alliance with the breakaway Akali group. Talks are on and we are hopeful that it will be finalised soon. As far as seat sharing is concerned, it would be 80-20—80% AAP, and 20% seats will be given to them.”
The AAP has already declared a list of five candidates where its star candidate Bhagwant Mann will retain and contest from his existing seat Sangrur and Sadhu Singh, another AAP MP from Punjab, will also contest from his existing seat, Faridkot.
Candidates’ names for Hoshiarpur, Amritsar and Anandpur Sahib have also been declared and these seats will be contested by Ravjot Singh, Kuldip Singh Dhaliwal and Narinder Singh Shergill, respectively.
AAP’s likely candidate for Andaman and Nicobar Islands would be Sanjay Meshack. He had also contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from the islands on an AAP ticket, but had lost to Bishnu Pada Ray of the BJP. In 2014, the AAP had only managed to get 1.96% of the total vote share from the islands.