AAP should be renamed Apne Aap Party: Congress Party MP
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: The dismal showing of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Lok Sabha elections – getting only four Lok Sabha seats – was surmised by Congress Party MP in the Rajya Sabha Renuka Chowdhury, saying it was like a balloon waiting to burst, and post-results it’s apparent the balloon has burst.
“The AAP was always a balloon, it will burst,” said Chowdhury, speaking in Hindi on a panel on Zee Business channel. “The party had no focus, no goals. It should be renamed the Apne Aap Party; they were looking at only their image.”
Chowdhury dismissed the political aspirations of AAP’s leader Arvind Kejriwal, saying “he does not have the quality to be in elections.”
The three big names of AAP: Kejriwal, Yogendra Yadav and Kumar Vishwas, all suffered heavy defeats in their respective constituencies – Kejriwal from Varanasi; Yadav lost his security deposit from Gurgaon and finished a humiliating fourth, and Vishwas was a virtual non-entity in Amethi, where he camped for months before the elections to try and win over the confidence of the voters. The voters however, saw through the theatrics of the AAP, and the party has been virtually decimated in the polls.
The lack of vision and preparedness for the big national stage, as well as his political naivety was evident in an interview Yadav gave to The Economic Times, before the results started pouring in, where he said that given a chance AAP would have contested 500 seats rather than the 433 seats it finally went for.
It’s evident that Yadav and the AAP did not care for nurturing candidates of the AAP who had a realistic chance of winning, but instead spent their meager resources on vain contests like in Varanasi, Amethi and Gurgaon.
In Varanasi, according to data available with the Election Commission, Modi spent Rs. 30 lash on campaigning, while Ajay Rai of Congress spent Rs. 52.88 lakh, and Kejriwal spent around Rs. 41.50 lakh. AAP also had hundreds of volunteers in Varanasi to help Kejriwal’s far-fetched dream from the beginning of creating an upset.
All the four seats that the AAP finally managed to get came from Punjab.
Comedian Bhagwant Mann won by over 2.10 lakh votes at Sangrur, defeating the Shiromani Akali Dal’s (SAD) Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and the Congress sitting MP Vijay Inder Singla.
Prof Sadhu Singh won by one lakh votes, defeating SAD sitting MP Paramjit Kaur Gulshan and Congress MLA, Joginder Singh Panjgrain.
Cardiologist Dr Dharamvir Gandhi defeated Congress MP and Union External Affairs Minister Preneet Kaur in Patiala, while former diplomat Harinder Singh Khalsa defeated the Congress’ Sadhu Singh in Fatehgarh Sahib.