AAP to tap NRI support for Punjab, Goa polls

NEW DELHI: Come October, thousands of non-resident Indian (NRI) volunteers of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will plunge themselves into a routine of making calls on behalf of the party to potential voters in Goa and Punjab for a few hours every day.

After registering a huge success with its NRI-calling programme in the 2015 Delhi assembly elections, AAP is once again tapping its support base spread over at least a dozen countries to canvas for the party and secure funds for fighting the assembly elections in the two states. As much as 22% of the party’s election funding comes from other countries.

As Goa and Punjab will go to polls in early 2017, the party plans to re-launch the programme from

the first week of October. “We will make more than 60 lakh calls till the start of the elections,” Sreekant Kocherlakota, secretary of AAP’s US chapter, told HT over the phone from Los Angeles.

The Delhi assembly elections had seen over 10.8 lakh calls being

made from the US alone, with nearly 2,400 of the total callers dialling more than 50 numbers a day.

At present, AAP has nine overseas chapters in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Qatar, UK, UAE and Italy. “We already have volunteers in Germany, the Philippines and Malaysia. We will formally launch our chapters in these countries before the Punjab and Goa elections,” said an AAP leader involved in the party’s overseas expansion.

The Italy chapter organised meetings with AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal when he visited Rome on September 4. Surrounded by supporters, he recorded a video message announcing his decision to take charge of affairs in Punjab in the wake of state convenor Sucha Singh Chhottepur’s dismissal last month. “Kejriwal’s message was recorded amid chants of support from Punjabis at the gathering. It helped assuage the feelings of supporters back home, who were feeling disheartened due to Sucha Singh’s exit and the allegations he subsequently made,” a party leader from Punjab said.