2020 Assembly polls: AAP readies game plan for Delhi fight

NEW DELHI: After the drubbing in the Lok Sabha election, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has decided to counter ‘Modi 2.0’ in the Delhi Assembly polls next year with an energetic campaign that projects party chief Arvind Kejriwal as the only candidate fit for the post of chief minister.

Kejriwal’s party failed to take the lead in any of the 70 Assembly segments in Delhi, where the BJP won all seven Lok Sabha seats again. In 2015, AAP had won 67 Assembly seats.

AAP party leaders told ET that the party has decided to take up campaigning for the next Assembly polls on a war footing and will soon launch a new tagline — ‘Iss baar, Kejriwal’. In 2015, the party’s tagline ‘Paanch Saal Kejriwal’ had become very popular, and the party is keen on having an equally rousing tagline for the 2020 Assembly elections, one of the persons cited earlier said.


“Our key poll plank of full statehood to Delhi failed to dominate the political narrative in this highly polarised election.

The election was a total personality battle – a fight between Modi and Rahul Gandhi,” a party functionary said. “In such a contest, those who wanted to be against the BJP, did not see an option in Kejriwal and the issues that the AAP raised, and voted for the Congress instead. The state election will be a different story,” he said.

While the party finished a distant third in key parliamentary seats such as North East Delhi, Chandni Chowk and East Delhi, where it was in a direct contest with the Sheila Dikshit-led Congress for the dominant minority vote, the party finished second to the BJP in West Delhi and South Delhi.

In 2014, the average vote share of the AAP in Delhi was 32.90% despite a strong Modi wave. When the assembly polls were held in 2015, AAP won 67 seats with a strike rate of over 95%. The BJP won the other three seats, with the Congress drawing a naught.