Arvind Kejriwal Announces AAP to Contest All 13 Lok Sabha Seats in Punjab

The AAP has already announced the names of five candidates for Lok Sabha seat in October.

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will contest at all 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, party leader Arvind Kejriwal announced on Sunday. Kejriwal arrived in Punjab in the morning to launch the party’s election campaign for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections with a rally in Barnala town.

Talking to reporters, Delhi CM said, “People want a change. They are fed up with the Modi government. The BJP will lose in the Lok Sabha elections.”

The AAP has already announced the names of five candidates for Lok Sabha seat in October. These seats are Sangrur, Faridkot, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar and Anandpur Sahib.

In 2014, Lok Sabha elections, AAP had won four seats in Punjab. The party could not win a single Lok Sabha seat anywhere else in the country in that election. There are 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab. The Congress is in power in the state since March 2017.

On January 16, Rebel AAP MLA Baldev Singh had resigned from the party’s primary membership, accusing its leadership of “giving up its basic ideology and principles and party chief Arvind Kejriwal of being “dictatorial and arrogant”.

The AAP legislator from Jaitu had tendered his resignation to Kejriwal. He is the second MLA to quit the party after Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira — another AAP rebel who resigned on January 6.

Baldev Singh, along with other MLAs, had sided with Khaira after he was removed as Leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly last year by the AAP. He had even attended the launch ceremony of Khaira’s political outfit Punjabi Ekta Party.

(With PTI inputs)