AAP to build rural base by supporting farmer protests
The NE had assembled to discuss the party’s future roadmap in the backdrop of its poor performance in the Delhi municipal polls, where it won a measly 48 of 270 seats in three corporations, and the Goa assembly elections, where it drew a perfect zero.
The party had hoped to form the government in Punjab, but it ended up winning just 22 of 117 seats in alliance with the Lok Insaaf Party. Most of these were rural constituencies.
“We are encouraged by our experience in Punjab,” AAP national secretary Pankaj Gupta told HT. “Our target is to create a farmers’ movement wherever state governments are insensitive to their plight.”
“The NE passed a resolution that the government should be made to waive off farmers’ debt, just as it waives off loans for corporate houses,” party leader Sanjay Singh said. The party will join the ongoing farmers’ agitations in Maharashtra, and then start one in Punjab to highlight the 60 alleged suicides that have occurred there since Amarinder Singh took over.
The party’s Madhya Pradesh unit had initiated similar protests last month. Future agitations in the state will prominently feature the alleged killing of farmers by police in Mandsaur on Tuesday.
Gupta identified AAP’s focus areas as Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh. The three states will go to polls only in late 2018, giving the party enough time for organisation-building activities.
While AAP has taken a number of steps to regain lost support in Delhi, its leaders also believe that focusing on rural areas will prepare party cadres for the long haul. It has toned down social media campaigns in favour of building the party from “boothlevel upwards”, on the lines of its organisational structure in the Capital.