With the onset of the election campaign, an internal survey by the Aam Aadmi Party claims to win 5 seats in Punjab. The party however misses the point that it performed miserably in other states like Goa and in the Delhi MCD. The claim can also be questioned on the ground that the party in Punjab is now divided. This has led to its tremendous fall as a prospect to come up in the Lok Sabha Election.
Since the 2017 Punjab Assembly polls, the AAP has been declining in Punjab. In the 20 AAP MLAs of Punjab, three have already left the party. This might hit the party hard in the upcoming LS Elections. The news of split in the AAP has been going around for some time now. 7 rebel leaders had made plans to leave the party in August last year and now 6 are firm on establishing a separate party under leadership of Sukhpal Singh Khaira. One of the rebel members Kanwar Sandhu said “they would decide their next move after consulting their supporters.” The speculations of AAP and Congress alliance had been making the rounds but the state CM has ruled them out.
The party has failed to secure a strong position in the state of Punjab and this fracture is going to make matters worse. The lack of support from its own members makes it easy to rubbish the claim made by their “internal survey”. The stakes are high for AAP in Punjab in these General Elections as they are the largest opposition party in Punjab.
The internal survey can also be questioned on the grounds of its prediction. The party has performed poorly not just in the state of Punjab but others as well. The statistics from the Delhi MCD elections do not support the predictions made by the party’s survey. The three civic bodies of Delhi have, for the third time, proven that Aam Aadmi Party is no longer the popular choice. The results produced had BJP with about 181 wards, Congress with 30 and Aam Aadmi with just 48 wards. It is another setback after Punjab for Arvind Kejriwal who had a sweeping majority in 2015 Assembly elections.
The story however doesn’t end here. The party performed terribly even in the 2017 Goa elections
The Aam Aadmi Party did not even win a single seat in a legislature of 40 members Assembly. The CM candidate of AAP couldn’t manage to win from his constituency. The debacle in Goa had also resulted in 38 out of 39 AAP candidates losing their deposits.
The party, whose popularity is already on a downward trend, seems to be at the end of its political spell. The confidence in Punjab has dwindled. The popularity in Delhi has gone away. Goa now looks like a far-fetched dream for the party. In the current scenario, the people are filled with disappointment and looking for alternatives. The internal survey thus becomes a joke with a biased prediction. The Aam Aadmi Party is surely in for a tough time this general election.