The major setback to the Aam Aadami Party (AAP) in Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) election has cast a shadow on plans to strengthen party in Uttarakhand. The State party leaders were hoping that a good performance in these elections would boost the morale of party workers in Uttarakhand. However the election result of MCD resulted in sullen faces of party workers and sympathizers in Dehradun. It is worth mentioning here that there is a significant population of people of Uttarakhand origin in Delhi and the election results there have direct bearing on the politics of the State.
“The defeat of Delhi is really disheartening. We were hoping that the party would win all three corporations of Delhi as Arvind is doing a very good job as Chief Minister. However the defeat is a lesson to the party and leaders should sit and introspect on the cause of defeat should be done,’’ said a party worker.
The state President of the party, Chandra Shekhar Bhatt also accepted that the defeat in MCD election is a setback for the party and would have its consequences on the party in state. He however added that the party is in the process of creating and revamping its organizational setup in Uttarakhand. On the question about the propriety of blaming the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) for the defeat as some of the senior AAP leaders are doing, Bhatt said that there appears to be some substance in the allegations of EVM tempering. He claimed that during the campaign the party got very positive response but the election results are not on the expected lines. The party president claimed that the party would weather the storm and emerge stronger. The AAP is continuously trying to emerge as a viable third alternative to BJP and Congress in Uttarakhand but all its efforts have failed to yield any result so far. The party fared miserably in the parliamentary elections of 2014 when its candidates lost their security deposits in all the five seats of the state. In the recent assembly election the party could not muster the courage to field its candidates.