Modi’s popularity and defeat in elections forced AAP to go rural

NEWDELHI: Repeated electoral failures of the AAP have forced a paradigm shift in the organisation that once targeted only the urban working classes; to try and build a rural base simultaneously by taking up the farmer’s cause, party leaders say.

The party’s support base in Punjab, where it won nearly 24% votes in the assembly polls, is largely rural. At the party’s recently concluded annual meeting of the national executive, it decided to launch a farmers’ agitation from June 10. On Friday, four party leaders will travel to Mandsaur in MP where a farmers’ agitation is raging.

The Delhi municipal elections and the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls both showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal among the urban voters is not diminishing, a senior leader admitted. Targeting Modi and the BJP over social media just wasn’t enough, the party discovered when it lost the municipal polls in its own backyard. “Our volunteers were completely dismayed by the UP results and the effects showed in the Delhi MCD polls,” he added.

At least three senior AAP leaders said the party had never prepared itself or its volunteers for defeat in Punjab.

“We had only thought of winning and forming a government in Punjab. As a result, even when we went from zero to 22 seats in the assembly and became the principal opposition, we could not celebrate,” a senior leader said. “For the future, we will teach our volunteers that polls should be fought with all our strength but there will be wins and losses,” his colleague said.