Gurugram: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will go solo in the upcoming Haryana assembly elections and field candidates on all 90 seats in the state.
The party will release its manifesto, ‘Kejriwal Ki Guarantee’, on Saturday in the presence of jailed Delhi Chief Minister and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal’s wife Sunita Kejriwal.
At a press conference in Chandigarh Thursday, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said AAP will contest the Haryana assembly elections with full strength, leveraging their governance experience in Delhi and Punjab.
He asserted that Haryana shares borders with two AAP-ruled states. “Punjab and Haryana share cultural similarities, and people in Haryana are aware of the work done in Delhi. Additionally, people in the two states have familial ties. All this makes the connections between Punjab and Haryana very strong.”
The Punjab CM cited AAP’s significant victory in Jalandhar West assembly bypoll last week with almost a 60 percent vote margin, and wins in the three Lok Sabha seats of Sangrur, Hoshiarpur (taken from BJP), and Sri Anandpur Sahib. He praised the leaders from these constituencies for establishing a strong presence.
He further said it goes to AAP’s credit that it has become a national party in just 10 years, adding that despite various parties having had their time in Haryana, none have genuinely served the people, often exploiting them instead.
He pointed out that Arvind Kejriwal has roots in Haryana, making AAP’s prospects even brighter. Kejriwal hails from Siwani, a small town in the state’s Bhiwani district, and his uncle’s family still lives there.
ਅੱਜ ਹਰਿਆਣਾ ਦੀਆਂ ਵਿਧਾਨ ਸਭਾ ਚੋਣਾਂ ਦੀ ਕੈਂਪੇਨ ਦਾ ਸਲੋਗਨ "ਬਦਲਾਂਗੇ ਹਰਿਆਣਾ ਦਾ ਹਾਲ, ਹੁਣ ਲਿਆਵਾਂਗੇ ਕੇਜਰੀਵਾਲ", ਲਾਂਚ ਕੀਤਾ… pic.twitter.com/ohEGP3mLuO
— Bhagwant Mann (@BhagwantMann) July 18, 2024
In the Lok Sabha polls, Congress and AAP contested 9 and 1 seats respectively. AAP’s vote percentage was 3.94 percent against 46.11 percent of the BJP and 43.67 of the Congress.
In 2019, AAP contested Lok Sabha polls in Haryana in alliance with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) and contested three seats — Karnal, Ambala and Faridabad. AAP’s candidates got a vote share of 1.7 percent, 0.9 percent and 0.8 percent respectively.
Also read: Shot in arm for Mann as AAP wins Jalandhar West assembly bypoll after poor showing in LS polls
Reaching out to villages, town hall planned
AAP General Secretary Sandeep Pathak announced that the party will contest every seat in Haryana and aim to form government independently. He stressed on the public’s desire for change and AAP’s commitment to fulfilling the people’s expectations, adding that while AAP might not show up in surveys (exit polls), it has a track record of forming governments.
Pathak said that in the Lok Sabha elections, the party’s lone candidate Sushil Kumar Gupta, who contested from Kurukshetra, got immense support from voters but unfortunately lost to BJP’s Naveen Jindal. He added that the party will follow the Kurukshetra model across Haryana, contesting all 90 seats independently, and that Kejriwal will address further questions once he is out of jail.
He assured that AAP will contest the elections in a manner that the world will take notice. Nearly 6,500 villages have already been reached through public dialogues, and a town hall event will be held Saturday where Kejriwal’s ‘guarantees’ will be discussed.
Meanwhile, Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh said AAP’s decision to go solo was made because the people of Haryana have experienced all other parties’ governance. He criticised the current “double-engine” government, citing “extortion and high unemployment” in Haryana. He underscored the pride of Punjabi and Haryanvi youth in joining the army, criticising the Agniveer scheme and advocating for its rollback. This, he said, would be one of their key issues.
“During these 10 years, Haryana has become an extortion industry. We have seen batons on Haryana’s roads. We have seen farmers being crushed during protests. We have seen the demands of farmers from Punjab and Haryana being trampled. Unemployment is a huge problem in Haryana and the Indian Army has been outsourced through the Agniveer scheme,” Singh said, adding that AAP will contest the Haryana elections on all these issues.
Contacted by ThePrint, Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda said his party’s alliance with AAP is at the national level and only for the parliamentary polls. “We don’t have any alliance with AAP or any other political party for assembly polls,” he added.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)