How AAP plans to stop alcohol from undoing their work in Delhi

One day before the Delhi assembly election, the Aam Aadmi Party is getting all its final preparations in place to make sure that tomorrow’s polling doesn’t undo the momentum the party has built since it made its entry into Delhi’s political arena.

Now that campaigning is over, the party’s main agenda is to make sure that political rivals don’t gain undue advantages the day before the polling by distributing cash and alcohol, the two most preferred means to lure voters.

To do this, the party started a ‘saying no to bribery’ campaign last week, which it claims has been a successful move, as a large number of people responded and are informing the party about such happenings in various constituencies. “We distributed at least 5 lakh pamphlets to create a general awareness against bribery for swinging votes,” says AAP leader Yogendra Yadav.

“Almost 11,000 of our volunteers are working relentlessly from morning to post mid night to keep a vigil on whether other political outfits are distributing cash or booze to lure voters,” he adds.

These volunteers will continue to work on polling Day as well. “we will make sure that our volunteers have a presence in 10,500 booths. As per the EC guidelines, one person will be officially inside the booth as a representative of the party and two more people from the party will be present outside the booth,” he adds.

So far, AAP has filed five complaints to the election commission regarding bribery. In two cases cash was being distributed. The rest were related to alcohol.

The bribery issue, which is usually projected as a phenomenon that exists only in the peripheral slums in Delhi, has been reported from high profile constituencies like New Delhi and Kalkaji as well. “We are not trying to implicate Sheila Dikshit, but this is happening in her constituency also,” Yadav says.

According to AAP, some of their volunteers are carrying around hidden cameras to record such illegal actions. “Practically it is not possible to use 2000 cameras but thankfully because of the rumour some will stay away from committing such acts(distributing cash or alcohol),” quips an AAP insider, who wished to remain unnamed.

The Delhi police has also played a very active role to stop this practice of bribery. According to a police source, they have carried out a number of operations and raids by the police to seize unaccounted cash and alcohol, since getting a directive from the Election Commission to stop any kind of violation of the model code of conduct .

The Delhi Police has so far seized more than one crore of unaccounted cash from various locations and a large cache of alcohol, which, it is suspected, was acquired to distribute among voters, say sources.