The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has decided not to contest the Haryana Assembly polls, expected to be held in October.
The decision was announced by its national spokesperson and in-charge of Haryana affairs, Yogendra Yadav, after a meeting of the State executive of the party at Karnal on Tuesday.A resolution was passed by the State executive members, presidents of 18 district units and six defeated lok Sabha candidates, including Yadav himself who lost from Gurgaon. lack of approval from the party’s national leadership was cited as a reason for not contesting the polls.
Paramjeet Singh, secretary of the State unit, told The Pioneer that the decision not to contest the Assembly elections in Haryana has been taken to focus on Assembly polls in Delhi, which is extremely important for the party. The decision not to contest the polls was already taken at the national executive meeting of the AAP under the leadership of the party’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal on July 18 at Delhi and Tuesday’s meeting was just a formality.
According to sources, internal rift among some of the senior leaders in Haryana was a major factor in not contesting the polls. Several senior leaders of the party, including Naveen Jai Hind of Rohtak, abstained from the state executive meeting in Karnal. later on Naveen Jai Hind confirmed the internal rift through a tweet. Other AAP leaders said their party was finding it difficult to get candidates for 90 State Assembly seats in Haryana.
Interestingly, party chief Arvind Kejriwal, who hails from Haryana, seemed quite optimistic about the prospects from the State before the lok Sabha elections but after the results, in which the party had lost all the ten parliamentary seats, demoralization had set in.
According to the chief spokesperson of AAP in Haryana, Rajeev Godara, a resolution was passed at the meet in which it was felt that “it will not be practical” to fight the upcoming State Assembly polls in the absence of “full approval” of the party’s national leadership and in particular taking AAP’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal’s views into consideration.
Taking into consideration that a majority of AAP’s volunteers and workers had wanted the party to contest the Haryana Assembly polls, the State executive resolution mentioned that “with heavy heart, it is decided that without approval of the party’s national leadership, fighting the polls would be meaningless”.