‘AAP won Delhi polls because of its singularity of purpose’
NEW DELHI: Pre-poll surveys predicted an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) win, but the historical sweep stunned pundits. AAP’s chief strategist Ashish Talwar managed meetings, road shows and booth management. As the landslide euphoria begins to settle, he tells HT what worked and how. Excerpts:
AAP’s booth management took its opponents by surprise. What went into it?
For a party that has to be built brick-by-brick, only long-term planning works. Arvind initiated the mobilisation of booth-level volunteers by appointing gali-prabharis in July 2013. For the 2013 assembly elections, we could have 15,000 volunteers for 3,500 polling premises comprising 12,000 booths. After 18 months of continuous work we finally had 3,000 people managing 35,000-40,000 booth volunteers. Our colleagues Dilip Pandey and Durgesh Pathak played a stellar role in this entire process.
Despite the challenge of shedding the quitter tag, Kejriwal seemed to have an instant connect with the public. Did the party plan it that way?
When he interacts, people open up because they identify with him. They take selfies and hear him. In that sense, he is a total voter converter. So the idea was we should not waste resources on big rallies but hold meetings in each assembly seat. As the campaign progressed, the crowds increased. Some 800,000 to 1,000,000 people heard Arvind speak at 110 public meetings.
And the delay in holding fresh elections obviously helped? Yes, we had an early start. After Arvind resigned in February 2014, the centre didn’t hold fresh polls for a year. We started preparing in June itself. Unlike in BJP, there was no confusion in AAP. Right from the word go, we wanted paanch saal Kejriwal. There was a singularity of purpose. We launched various frontal outfits. Once elections were announced, all ships sailed in the same direction
The party seemed to rely completely on Kejriwal…
He is our biggest leader. But in total 620 meetings and road shows were conducted by all our star campaigners. Also, Kumar Vishwas’s entry in January gave a fillip to the campaign and some of his meetings had crowds in five figures.
What was the strategy in areas like rural Delhi where AAP had failed in 2013?
There are 13 rural seats and in 2013 we had drawn a blank but in 2014 Lok Sabha, our performance was better because many new entrants had joined the party between December and March 2014.
A lot of tickets were given to new entrants…
When ticket distribution took place, AAP as a political party had existed for two years and one set of these entrants had been with us for almost a year. So in reality only six tickets went to new entrants.