It is often said that it is good to be ‘confident’ but erroneous to be ‘overly-confident’. This has been the plight of the Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party in the recent past.
Even after facing a staggering defeat in the Telangana Assembly elections, the state wing of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) refuses to concede defeat or simmer down. Unfortunately, the party did not manage to take hold of even one seat out of the 41 seats they contested in Telangana (out of the total of 119 seats), but not willing to give up, the AAP party is now said to be intensively preparing for the State’s Gram Panchayat elections slated in January next year.
As per a report in The News Minute, The party’s observer for Telangana elections from Delhi, Priyanka Kakkar, justifying her party’s disastrous performance said, “One has to understand the circumstances under which AAP contested polls in Telangana. “The party has been working on the ground actively for just eight months preparing for the Gram Panchayat elections in January but then the Telangana assembly got dissolved prematurely on September 6, six months before end of term and we entered into state election mode,” she added, hinting that the party was not well prepared to handle the early elections in the state.
The AAP has reportedly registered only 13,500 votes among their 41 candidates combined this Telangana election. All its candidates have lost their deposits.
The party has also had a dismal performance in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. In Madhya Pradesh, the party contested in 208 seats and lost all seats. AAP’s CM candidate Alok Agarwal got only 823 votes. In all the states it had contested, NOTA had a higher vote share than AAP. It has lost deposits in all the states it has contested.
The party, under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal, has faced successive defeats from Punjab to Goa to Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections in Delhi to Bypolls in Punjab to Municipal elections in Punjab. Gujarat Assembly elections 2017, had also proved a major setback for the party.
Amongst all the other defeats, the Gujarat Assembly elections 2017 had proved to be one of the biggest heartbreak for the AAP as, despite an elaborate campaign, the party had lost deposits in all but 2 seats.
According to the reports back then, AAP had lost all 27 seats it contested, out of which in 26 seats it fetched far lesser numbers as even compared to NOTA. While the AAP got a total of 29,517 votes in the 29 seats, people used NOTA 75,880 times in these seats.
The total vote percentage of AAP in Gujarat was .08%, which means only 8 voters out of 10,000 voters supported Kejriwal.
AAP had lost Goa in 2017, the only state where it was expected to do well. Hobnobbing with Khalistani elements also could not save AAP from losing Punjab.
AAP failed to retain Rajouri seat in the by-polls in Delhi. And then ultimate decimation came in the MCD elections in Delhi in April 2017, where BJP won 181 seats, while AAP won a mere 49 seats.
In 2018, the AAP also failed to open an account in Nagaland and Mizoram. Similarly, the party’s performance in the 2018 Karnataka assembly elections was no exception. The AAP had then forfeited deposit in all 29 seats it had contested.
Kejriwal has lost every single election for AAP except one freak win in 2015. Kejriwal’s hatred for PM Modi and BJP is well known and as the 2019 general elections draw close, speculations are rife that AAP might look at Congress for an alliance. With AAP’s track record of consistent loss, it is doubtful whether the party will be entertained as an alliance partner among the opposition parties.
