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New Delhi, April 13: The Aam Aadmi Party’s performance in the Rajouri Garden bye-election has been dismal. While counting was underway, AAP candidate Harjeet Singh was a distant third, way behind his Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress counterparts. Not just that, Singh could get just a little over 13 per cent votes in his kitty.
The Rajouri Garden seat belonged to the Aam Aadmi Party after the party’s massive victory in the Delhi Assembly Elections 2015. Jarnail Singh had won the seat over Sirsa by over 10,000 votes in 2015. However, last year, Jarnail Singh had left the constituency to fight the Punjab Assembly elections earlier this year, and that precisely was mistake number 1.
The AAP decided to field him from the Lambi seat in Punjab, the home seat of former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. The Lambi seat has been with the Shiromani Akali Dal since 1977. It was only from 1992 to 1997 that the seat was with the Congress. It has otherwise been a SAD stronghold. Getting the MLA who registered a huge win in Delhi to quit and fight from this seat was mistake number 2. Jarnail Singh lost not just the seat, but his deposit too, as he could not garner one-sixth of the votes polled at the Lambi seat.
Following this, the AAP decided to look for a new face for the Rajouri Garden seat instead of getting Jarnail Singh back. The party decided to go with lesser-known Harjeet Singh instead of Jarnail Singh, clearly indicating that it was nervous about this seat. The nervousness does not seem to have done well for the AAP. The party has lost not just the seat, but its deposit in Rajouri Garden too.
The recent controversy over Kejriwal’s legal bills may also have hampered the party’s chances in this bypoll. The Kejriwal government made headlines for having written to the Delhi Leiutenant Governor Anil Baijal seeking bills of over Rs 3 crore to be paid to senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani, who is fighting for Kejriwal in the defamation case filed against the Delhi CM by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
Ever since the dismal loss in the Punjab and Goa Assembly elections, the AAP has been blaming allegedly faulty Electronic Voting Machines. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is all out against not just the Bharatiya Janata Party but also the Election Commission alleging that the poll panel is hand in glove with the BJP in tampering of EVMs. Not just that, the party had also blamed ‘confusion’ and ‘lack of awareness’ for low turnout in Rajouri Garden.
Is it high time that the AAP moves away from blame game and introspects? Isn’t it time that AAP looks within and rectifies mistakes than blatantly blaming the Election Commission? It’s just a few days to go for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections, scheduled for April 23. It’s time the AAP gets its act together.
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