Finding solace in the Rajouri Garden bypoll win after Punjab assembly elections debacle, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal on Thursday said that Aam Aadmi party’s loss heralded its end as a political entity in the country.
Congratulating the SAD-BJP candidate Manjinder Singh Sirsa for his convincing win in the Rajouri Garden bypoll, results or which were declared on Thursday, Sukhbir said that the combine had demolished AAP on its home turf.
“The result is a referendum on AAP’s policies in Delhi and had set the tone for the complete defeat of AAP in the forthcoming elections to the Delhi municipal corporation,” he said.
Sukhbir said: “What is most pertinent is that AAP candidate Harjit Singh had lost his security deposit.”
AAP’s former MlA from Rajouri Garden, Jarnail Singh, who resigned from this seat to contest elections from lambi constituency in Punjab had earlier won this seat by a margin of 10,000 votes.
As Rajouri Garden is a Sikh-dominated seat, “the severe erosion in the vote share of AAP is a clear indication of the party's current popularity amongst the Sikh community”, he added.
Congratulating Sirsa for putting AAP in back gear, Sukhbir said that now all dreams of the party to expand to other states, including Gujarat, had been quashed. “AAP, as a political entity, will be finished in the next two years,” he added.
SAD president also thanked the electorate of Rajouri Garden for sending out a clear cut signal that the people were not in favour of the confrontationist policies of AAP.
“Such policies have resulted in a governance paralysis and development has come to a crushing halt…Development could only occur with cooperation,” he said.
He added, “People have given a clear signal that they do not like Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's confrontationist attitude with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is also a verdict in favour of the pro-development policies of Modi and the NDA.”