The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), having contested in 22 seats across Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Assam in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, managed to win three seats in Punjab, increasing its representation in Parliament from the sole seat it won in 2014 and 2019 elections. The party once again failed to open its account in Delhi and replicate the success it has seen at the State level in the National elections.
AAP national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister had been confident that things would go differently for the party this time around, given that this was the first polls it was facing as a ‘national party’.
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Keen to showcase its “kaam ki jajneeti“ (politics of work), the INDIA bloc member drew a hard bargain with the Congress not only for the 4-3 seat-sharing alliance in the national capital but also for the Bharuch seat in Gujarat where the Congress had to deny Faisal Patel, son of the late Congress stalwart Ahmed Patel, a ticket from his father’s former constituency.
In Punjab and Assam as well, AAP and the Congress fought individually and not as a part of the INDIA bloc. The AAP was confident that the INDIA bloc would come to power on June 4. Mr. Kejriwal took the liberty to announce “Kejriwal’s 10 guarantees” that would be implemented at the national level if the alliance came to power.
The AAP became a rallying point for the INDIA bloc after Mr. Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case that amplified its campaign pitch that democracy and the Constitution were under threat if the BJP came back to power.
Mr. Kejriwal, who emerged as a star campaigner not only for the AAP but for the INDIA bloc as well with his direct attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, could not change the electoral fortunes of his party on the national stage.
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Senior AAP leader Gopal Rai, speaking on the result, said that the party was happy to be increasing its representation in Parliament with its wins in Punjab; the Delhi result showed that it has managed to reduce the BJP’s margin of victory. “The BJP thought it would be able to destroy the AAP by putting its senior leadership in jail. People asked us how would we run a campaign without our leaders. We have given a strong fight to the BJP and managed to increase our vote share,” he said.
In the two seats in Assam that it contested independently, Dibrugarh and Sonitpur, the AAP came in third place; in Gujarat, it was placed second in the Bharuch and Bhavnagar seats that it contested as part of the INDIA bloc. At Haryana’s Kurukshetra seat, contesting as part of the INDIA bloc, it had a close fight with BJP’s Naveen Jindal and was placed second. It lost all four seats in Delhi but managed to win Sangrur, Hoshiarpur and Anandpur Sahib of the 13 seats it contested in Punjab.