Eyeing Delhi’s seven parliamentary seats ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has constituted seven wings in three days including, Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe (SC-ST) wing, minority wing, youth wing, senior citizen wing, Purvanchal wing, Uttarakhand wing and South-Indian wing.
These wings are perceived as “special purpose vehicle” of AAP established for winning the party’s vote-bank. The party had to face a crushing defeat at the hand of its arch rival Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) on all the seven Lok-Sabha seats last time as the BJP swept the polls riding on the popular “Modi” wave.
These new wings are meant to increase the party’s outreach among the various communities and sections of society so as to garner their support. Though Delhi is considered a strong-hold of the AAP with the party ruling the State but its LS performance was not up to mark.
Ever since the party leaders, including its top brass have rued, saying the development of Delhi would have been without any “hurdle” had they won all the LS seats in Delhi. Political pundits said the AAP is trying to secure its vote bank by forming various wings fearing that it might split in case the traditional players like BJP and Congress are up with the caste or community card just ahead of the elections due next year.
According to experts, the good work done by AAP dispensation in Delhi particularly in the field of education and health is likely to pay dividends in the LS polls.
While the wings like ‘youth’ wing and ‘senior citizen’ wing are to rope in the support of youth and the elders, wings like ‘Purvanchal’ and the ‘Uttarakhand’ wing are its pursuit to woo the large vote bank hailing from the regions of eastern Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar and Uttarakhand respectively.
On the other hand the ‘minority’ and ‘SC-ST’ wing will help the party in reaching out to the Muslim and the Dalit community.
“Like all other wings the SC-ST and the minority wings will have the teams at State level, Lok-Sabha seat level, district level , Vidhan-Sabha level , Ward level, polling station and even booth level,” said Gopal Rai, Delhi convener of AAP while announcing the launch of SC-ST and minority wing on Wednesday.