In its quest for excellence, the Aam Aadmi Party has set its standard for clean candidates so high that questions have now started arising if this approach is effective in real terms. Having framed rigid guidelines for selection of candidates who go through a process of rigorous interviews and screening before becoming a AAP candidate, the party now faces the ire of rejected candidates and criticism from rivals poking loopholes in the selection procedure. Advocate Surendra Sharma, whose candidature was cancelled by AAP from Shahdra constituency in Delhi, alleges that despite clearing a strict selection process his candidature was finally rejected for reasons not provable in a court of law. It was alleged that Sharma has four FIRs against him, information on which was not shared with the screening committee. “Unless they give me details of FIRs pending against me how can Yogendra Yadav, Manish Sisodia and Arvind Kejriwal expect me to explain? It is easy to make allegations. Let me also tell you that there are no FIRs against me as of now and all of them have been quashed. I didn’t approach them. They called me on 20 August for the first time to meet Arvind Kejriwal on a one-to-one basis. I was again interviewed by (AAP members) Manish Sisodia and Yogendra Yadav before they cleared my name from Shahdra,” Sharma told CNN-IBN in the Face The Nation debate. [caption id=“attachment_1191979” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal. Naresh Sharma/Firstpost[/caption] Blaming AAP for defaming him in public, the former AAP candidate even threatened to sue the party. This gave rise to many questions: Did AAP falter on selection? Is the new process of selecting a candidate inadequate? “What Surendra Sharma said is true. There is not enough evidence to prove him guilty in a court of law. But there is enough evidence to make us feel uneasy. Lot of information about him, which were not revealed earlier, started coming in later. After we are fine with a candidate, we put all information about him in public domain seeking criticism or feedback about that person from people on three counts – corruption, criminality and character,” said psephologist and prominent AAP member Yogendra Yadav. “It is during this period we received some information about Surendra Sharma regarding a Bar Council election with which we were uncomfortable,” Yadav said. While the rejection of Sharma as AAP candidate is still debatable, the larger question is if squeaky clean candidates are available in India. “Failure of the bureaucracy to build a better institutional framework to deliver services, which should be otherwise easily available, has forced the politicians to take upon themselves of getting things done. Be it a power or water connection, the interference by the local politician is necessary in most cases to get it done. This in turn leads to corruption eroding the morality quotient,” said Jayaprakash Narayan of the Lok Satta Party, who also participated in the discussion. “Not only the honesty level, other skills like team player, organisational capabilities and knowledge about local politics also factor in to make a good candidate,” Narayan said explaining the difficulty in getting such candidates. In this age of money and muscle power, will parties like AAP or the Lok Satta Party be able to take on political behemoths like the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party focussing only on the goodness part? “It is a difficult process. We have no experience and we are learning. It is hard in this country to find good people to join politics. Our volunteers are good at protest but they are not experienced in politics. This is one of the first experiments of its kind. Our volunteers and workers are part of this selection process. Unlike others, it is not dictated from Akbar Road (BJP headquarters in New Delhi) or 10 Janpath (residence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi),” said Yadav. Meera Sanyal, president of LiberalsIndia for Good Governance, is optimistic that the effort would show fruit at some point in future. “AAP’s door-to-door campaign is interesting. At least they have put candidates upfront unlike other political parties. People know that they are trying to something different. Politics needs to be a vocation not profession,” Sanyal said.