AAP aims for 25 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 to bargain with opposition

India वोट Kar | September 24, 2018

The Aam Aadmi Party will try to win at least 25 of the roughly 100 seats it intends to fight in the coming Lok Sabha election, so that it is better placed if a non-BJP government is formed, two party leaders said on Sunday. A senior leader said 25 seats would leave the party in a comfortable position to bargain with other parties after the 2019 vote.

Where AAP will contest

The party’s focus will be Delhi, Haryana and Punjab, where it says it has a strong organisation. It will also contest Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which hold Assembly elections later this year, and selected seats in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.

Arvind Kejriwal, AAP’s national convener and Delhi’s Chief Minister, toured Haryana recently, where state chief Navin Jaihind has built up the party in several constituencies. “We will work hard to pose a tough challenge to BJP and Congress on all the 10 seats in Haryana,” he said. AAP holds four of Punjab’s 13 Lok Sabha seats and is the opposition in the state Assembly; a party leader said it would try to increase that number. The two leaders felt that combining local and national issues would work in the party’s favour.

The Rafale row

Kejriwal has stepped up attacks on the Modi government over the deal to buy 36 Rafale jets from France. On Saturday he called for a special session of Parliament on the deal, and on Friday he asked the Centre to come clean after former French president Francois Hollande was quoted in a French publication as saying the Indian government had proposed Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence as Dassault Aviation’s offset partner in the Rs 58,000-crore agreement. The Centre said on Saturday it played no part in choosing Reliance Defence.

Background

The BJP won all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in 2014. AAP leaders, including Kejriwal, have said that if they had won those seats, issues such as the sealing drive against illegal commercial establishments would have been handled better. A year later, AAP won 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly election.