AAP to contest Maharashtra polls, says time for opposition to stand up to BJP-Shiv Sena

Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP had opted out of 2019 Lok Sabha elections and had drawn a blank in Maharashtra during the 2014 parliamentary polls.

AAP leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal | File photo |PTI

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has decided to contest assembly elections in Maharashtra, likely to be held in October, going against its own stance that it won’t contest polls outside Delhi.

The decision to contest the Maharashtra assembly elections was taken Thursday when senior members of the party’s state unit held a meeting in this regard. The party followed up the decision by constituting a campaign committee Friday.

Confirming the development, AAP national spokesperson and a member of the Maharashtra unit Preeti Sharma Menon said the party felt there was a need to stand up to the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena combine in the state.

“Deliberations were on for a while as we are not very strong and are still quite small in Maharashtra,” Menon said. “However, no one was standing up to the parties in power here. Not even the opposition. We felt it was about time and important that someone did,” she added.

“Far from holding the government accountable and ensuring some respite for the suffering citizenry, the opposition with its elected representatives is in a disarray and has failed to its basic constitutional duty,” another member of AAP’s Mumbai unit said.

The decision is significant as AAP had drawn a blank in Maharashtra in the 2014 general elections.

It had stayed away from the Lok Sabha polls this year as a strategy to “save democracy from the clutches” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.

‘BJP-Shiv Sena a colossal failure’

AAP’s Maharashtra unit also put out a press statement Friday, accusing the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP-Shiv Sena government of being a colossal failure.

“Despite the electorate voting for change in the previous elections, the present government has been a colossal failure on all fronts,” the statement read. “Maharashtra, once known to be to a progressive state, is today plagued by large-scale drought, floods, farmer suicides, agrarian distress, rising unemployment, failing law and order, rising crime, widespread corruption, bureaucratic inertia, lack of service delivery, economic slowdown and the near-collapse of public education.”

The AAP, however, has a negligible presence in the state.

Infighting, bickering, unilateral decisions by the central leadership that didn’t go down well with leaders in the state, and a rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, where it managed to get just 2.2 per cent of the vote share, had decimated its presence.

Strong faces such as Anjali Damania, Mayank Gandhi and Maruti Bhakpur quit while the party’s state committee was dissolved. Towards the second half of 2017, however, AAP began appointing observers in every assembly constituency to mobilise support.