Back from the brink, can AAP pull off a come-back in Delhi?

New Delhi: Armed with a stronger organisational structure and Arvind Kejriwal’s undivided attention, the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi appears to have put the Lok Sabha debacle and its messy aftermath behind it and looks determined to make a come-back in the national capital. In a boost to party workers, Kejriwal had on Sunday announced that AAP would not be contesting the upcoming assembly elections in four states but that it would be concentrating all its energies here. With its call for a public rally at Jantar Mantar on 3 August, which senior party leader Anand Kumar in an interview to Firstpost earlier this week described as the beginning of a ‘new chapter’, the party looks set to take its political activities in Delhi a notch up. “So far it has been projected that it is AAP that wants elections in Delhi. We want to show that it is not AAP but the people of Delhi who want an election. AAP is only representing the voice of the people of Delhi. They want a government that listens to them, who addresses their problems. The rally is to show that Delhiites are frustrated with the false promises of the BJP and they want to ask BJP why they are running away from an election,” said AAP MLA and former Delhi law minister Somnath Bharti. But how is the party so confident that public sentiment has turned against the BJP, a party which only two months ago swept the Lok Sabha polls winning all seven parliamentary seats and taking the lead in 61 out of the 70 assembly segments. “We are in touch with the people. Arvind_ji_ and other leaders are constantly on the move and are meeting people and volunteers. The energy of our volunteers has increased manifold… it has increased tremendously. From being down a few months ago they are back in their element now. And the few surveys that have been done internally and outside are also showing positive trends for us,” said Ashutosh, AAP’s Delhi convenor. The party’s organisational structure in Delhi, say party leaders, has been beefed up. The Lok Sabha elections had exposed AAP’s organisational deficiencies and the aftermath had seen a demoralised volunteer base protest against the lack of inner-party democracy and transparency. “In Delhi, we have already changed our guards. We have a new convenor. We have a new set of 70 observers for assembly seats. We are using our seven Lok Sabha candidates to the best of our capacity. Delhi is on the job,” Kumar had said in the interview. Explaining the organisation structure that has been put in place, Ashutosh said, “Almost in all the 70 constituencies in Delhi we have finalised our booth coordinators. At some of the booths, we also have polling station in-charges. Then we have ward-level and assembly-level leaders. The work of the assembly leaders is monitored by district coordinators and observers. We have given final shape to our organisation in Delhi.” The organisation, says Malviya Nagar MLA Bharti, has been built ‘bottom-up’ and insists that the AAP party network is so strong that “within two days, we can reach everyone in Delhi.” Severely criticised by volunteers for not being accessible to them, Kejriwal appears to have made amends. “Arvind is now available to everybody. Every day between 9 am to 10 am he meets volunteers. And every Saturday, we have a Google Hangout. In every constituency, at various places we gather on Saturday evenings, around 7.30 pm, and Arvind addresses us on Google Hangouts from the party office in Connaught Place. Through SMS we ask him questions and he responds. The communication gaps have been bridged…When we come across new strategies, we adopt them. We are in a high-speed mode,” said Bharti. With the party’s organisational set up in place and morale of volunteers seeing an upswing, the party seems well-placed to capitalise on the BJP’s diffidence to go for elections with its rally on Sunday. “We want people to question why the BJP is running away from elections. A party that was claiming that there was a tsunami of Narendra Modi during Parliamentary elections and won all seven seats in Delhi, should have been well-placed to win the assembly elections. But they know that it is impossible for them to repeat that performance. We want to go to people and urge them to ask the BJP leaders why they are running away from elections,” said Ashutosh. While the response to Sunday’s rally will have to be seen to be believed, the party is not shying away from putting up an aggressive show of confidence. “This time the target for us will not be 28 seats but we hope to cross 40 so that we are comfortably placed to run the government for five years and deliver what we aspire for. The idea is to project Delhi as a model state for the rest of the country and for people to realise that a corruption-free government is possible,” said Ashutosh. While there have been reports that the party is considering fielding new faces in constituencies where AAP had lost in the assembly elections in December last year, there is no official word yet on ticket distribution. “We are in the process of assessing the candidates but we have not reached any conclusion yet,” said Ashutosh. The party, however, confirmed that efforts were on to convince former AAP member Shazia Ilmi to contest assembly polls in Delhi.  Ilmi, a founding member of the party, had walked out of the party in May over differences on the manner in which was being run and its of lack of inner-party democracy. “We have requested her and we are trying to have a word with her. There is no finality on that yet,” said Delhi’s convenor.