Haryana AAP: Congress lost 5 seats in all the places where Kejriwal campaigned
#News Bureau October 11,2024
The Aam Aadmi Party, which lost the Haryana assembly elections badly, has now shifted its focus to strengthening and reviving its organisation in the state. Senior leaders said the party will soon hold a meeting to discuss its organisational matters before shifting its focus to the upcoming municipal elections in the state.
AAP’s Haryana vice-president Anurag Dhanda attributed the party’s disappointing performance to the absence of its national convenor Arvind Kejriwal, who got a late bail and turned up at the last minute to campaign in some seats. However, an analysis of the 11 seats where the former Delhi chief minister campaigned shows that the party did not win a single seat even in those seats where it got more votes than the margin of victory in five such seats, which particularly hurt the Congress’ prospects.
In the current elections of Haryana, BJP won for the third time in a row and got 48 out of 90 seats as against 37 seats of Congress. It has now got the support of three independents as well. Out of the three independents, two were rebels of BJP and one is a rebel of Congress.
Both the AAP and the Congress are part of the India Alliance, but unlike the Lok Sabha elections, they could not reach a seat-sharing agreement for the assembly elections in the state. Kejriwal, who was released on bail from Tihar jail on September 13, began campaigning in Haryana on September 20.
It is a different matter that AAP failed to open its account after contesting 89 out of 90 seats and got only 1.79% vote share. Though Kejriwal hails from Haryana, AAP has not been able to open its account in this state till date. Initially, AAP was supported by the Vaishya community associated with RSS and BJP but that did not translate into votes.
The 11 constituencies in Haryana where Kejriwal campaigned were – Ballabhgarh, Assandh, Rewari, Badshahpur, Bhiwani, Pundri, Meham, Kalayat, Rania, Dabwali and Jagadhari. Of these, AAP performed best in three seats – Rewari, Bhiwani and Jagadhari – and came third. AAP came fourth in one seat, fifth in five seats, seventh and eighth in one seat each.
AAP Haryana vice-president Anurag Dhanda contested from Kalayat seat and got 5,482 votes, trailing the Congress winner by over 42,000 votes. But the Congress lost the seat by the same margin. Dhanda said if the party had more time, it could have repeated its Gujarat performance, where in the 2022 assembly elections, it won five seats and 12.92% vote share. “We had four months during the Gujarat elections. But this happened as a result of the BJP’s plan to keep Kejriwal away from Haryana,” he said.
