AFTER PUNJAAP, KEJRI EYES RAJ
After the landslide victory in Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party has plans for Rajasthan too. The party is planning a month-long membership campaign and a workers’ convention in a couple of months and the team that managed the campaign in Punjab will come here for poll preparations.
“The party’s focus is on Gujarat for now but after that, we’ll start focusing on Rajasthan and in the meantime, the party will work to strengthen the organisation here. Our membership campaign will start in a week and workers convention will take place after this,” said Devendra Shastri, the state secretary of AAP Rajasthan.
LOOKING AHEAD
The party had contested 142 of the 200 seats in the last assembly elections in 2019 on its symbol and got a 1 per cent vote. The party has its organisation in 26 districts of the state and now plans to expand to all 33 districts.
This time, the party is hoping to get a good response from the public, especially in districts like Sriganganagar, Hanumangarh and Churu as these are the neighbouring districts of Punjab and Haryana, the Sikh and Jat dominated states. “We recently held a meeting in Ganganagar, got good support, though we won’t be confined to these districts only and work in entire Rajasthan,’ said Shastri.
Notably, Rajasthan is known for its bipolar politics of Congress and BJP and a change of government every 5 years. Other parties are almost non-existent, though
BSP managed to bag 6 seats in the last poll, all its MLAs defected to Congress in 2019.
Apart from BSP, the CPM has 2 and RLD has 1 seat in the state assembly. Besides national parties, two regional parties Rashtriya Loktantrik Party and Bharatiya Tribal Party have 3 and 2 seats respectively. So, apart from Congress and BJP, all other parties have only 15 seats in the assembly.
Meanwhile, Congress and BJP leaders are confident
that the trend will continue. “The political situation of Punjab and Rajasthan is different. AAP was active in Punjab but this is not the situation here (in Rajasthan),” said state Congress president Govind Singh Dotasara. BJP state president Satish Punia said, “Experiments of the third front have failed here as people in Rajasthan are emotionally attached to BJP and Congress. So, it will be difficult for other parties to get public support.”