Amid celebration over win in five out of 13 wards in the MCD bypolls, results of which were declared on Tuesday, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) expressed hope to “win all the seats in civic body polls next year.” The party acknowledged that the result was not as “overwhelming” as it had expected.
On Tuesday morning as the counting of votes began, the volunteers of the party started gathering at its head office Rouse Avenue and celebrated the win.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted, “MCD ruled by BJP-Cong. Outsider AAP wins max seats in by-election. Thnx Delhi for reaffirming faith. Ab MCD election mein sabhi seat jeetni (sic).”
Out of the 13 wards that went to bypolls, the AAP won from Matiala, Tekhand, Nanakpura and Vikas Nagar and Ballimaran.
While addressing a Press conference immediately after the results of the bypolls were declared, AAP Delhi unit convener Dilip Pandey said while the AAP has emerged as the “largest party”, it had “expected” a few more seats.
“AAP has emerged as the largest party in the bypolls. This means it is bigger than BJP and Congress. This was our debut and it was great learning experience. We had expected a few more seats,” said Pandey.
Pandey said the party would examine why the results were not up to the expectation. “We will examine why the result didn’t match our expectations. For this, we will hold discussion with the MlAs to assess what went wrong,” he said.
However, he said the MCD bypolls were not a parameter to assess the popularity of the State Government. “The issues in the MCD polls are different than Assembly and lok Sabha polls. In the MCD polls, a lot depends on the local candidate and the person’s contact and proximity. The BJP lost a gram panchayat election in a village adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Congress lost civic body polls in Rahul Gandhi’s constituency. So there is hardly any link between popularity of any leader or party as issues are completely different in MCD polls,” he said.
Terming the bypolls as a “launch pad” to the “mega final” next year, he said the results show that AAP has the capability of “restricting BJP to minimum numbers”.
“BJP and Congress had put in all efforts. All big leaders barring Sonia Gandhi and Rahul campaigned for the Congress candidates. Despite this, the AAP has emerged victorious,” he said.