At a time leaders of the Congress, the main Opposition party in Gujarat, are busy in pulling each other’s legs, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Adami Party (AAP) has started working silently to build its party organisation right from the grassroots level in the State, considered as BJP bastion over the past two decades.
It all started following the resignation of AAP’s State convener Sukhdev Patel couple of months back. Since then AAP’s Gujarat unit is being operated from Delhi. AAP leadership is working on long term strategies keeping the 2017 Gujarat Assembly elections in mid. According to sources in AAP, if the party wouldn’t replace BJP, it would definitely overtake Congress in the State by the time results of next Assembly polls would come out.
As part of the strategy, a seven member team of AAP leaders visited Gujarat from party headquarters in Delhi recently and travelled across the State. They spent around a week and met local AAP leaders in different districts in order to restructure party organisation in Gujarat. AAP has divided 33 districts in five different zones — North Gujarat, Central Gujarat, South Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch.
“In line with Delhi, micro level management has been planned. Right from Booth level committees up to State level committees have been planned to establish systematic party organisation,” said an AAP leader.
Despite such detailed planning, Kejriwal’s party is not in mood to contest upcoming local body elections in October this year. Citing reason for skipping local body polls, AAP leader Rituraj Mehta said that restructuring process is going on and his party wouldn’t get adequate time to prepare for the polls.
“Our national leadership has ambitious long term plans for the assembly elections which might come in December 2017,” said Mehta, who contested from Gandhinagar constituency in the last lok Sabha elections against BJP’s patriarch lK Advani.
In fact Mehta has already started working on this direction as he has moved a PIl against the State Government to save water bodies in Ahmedabad. “Residents of 35 societies in Thaltej area are supporting me in this cause,” he claimed.
AAP has dissolved all the committees in Gujarat. After Patel’s resignation, Mayank Gandhi was made in-charge of the State, but after some time he was replaced by another senior leader Ashish Khetan. Recently Khetan visited the State to understand ground realities of the party in Gujarat.
During the lok Sabha elections, nearly five lakh members were registered with us in the State, claimed AAP’s Gujarat media in-charge Harshil Nayak, adding that resignation of Patel was part of ‘Mission Vistar’ launched by the party after the party’s thumping victory in Delhi.