AAP’s new Lok Sabha plan: Balance between invoking sympathy for Kejriwal, restrained attack on Modi

“We are aware that there is a strong support base for Modi in Delhi but there is also one for Arvind Kejriwal – as several elections in which the people have chosen Modi for Lok Sabha and Kejriwal for the Delhi Assembly have shown over the years,” an AAP insider said. “Just the way the people don’t like Kejriwal when he takes on Modi directly, they also don’t like Modi putting Kejriwal, who made a qualitative change in various ways in their lives, in jail. And that is what we will appeal to,” the insider added.

Not attacking Modi directly but underlining the Kejriwal-led AAP Delhi government’s achievements from the education sector to its flagship power and water subsidy schemes, AAP workers will interact with citizens in markets, at busy intersections, corner meetings and even public-run buses and aboard the Delhi metro over the coming days, according to sources.

In addition to party workers, elected AAP representatives from MLAs to councillors – the latter were also part of the organisational meeting at the AAP headquarters on Saturday – have been asked to hit the ground as part of the initiative. This is when plans are afoot to get its war room for the Lok Sabha elections operational next week.

“Instead of taking Modi head-on, we will underline the importance of the AAP government’s flagship subsidies, the qualitative change that these brought about in the lives of the people and how that same individual who gave them good schools, free power and water, who they bestowed with their love in the form of their votes in election after election over the last decade, is now languishing in jail,” a source said.

“The people are intelligent enough to understand who has put their popular CM behind bars…We will take this message to the 13,000-plus polling booths in the city, irrespective of whether they fall under the AAP or our INDIA ally, the Congress’s, Lok Sabha seats,” the source added.