‘If we had time, could’ve done better’: AAP campaign in-charge Durgesh Pathak on party’s troubles

But Delhi voted in Phase 6…

(I speak of) time in the sense… that most of our leaders were in jail — Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, even CM Arvind Kejriwal and Sanjay Singh and they got bail very late… We had two fights to fight — BJP and polls… Our leaders were getting CBI and ED notices… So there were a lot of obstacles due to which we could not fight with full force, but still I feel it was a good performance.

Thinking back, what could have been done differently?

If we had got time, we could have campaigned better… It was a fight to save the country for which several parties came together against the PM… I think this resonated with the people, that is why BJP has suffered overall…

Congress announced candidates very late. Is that a reason?

… it doesn’t matter as some parties do it early, some later…

In a lot of places, voters weren’t aware of the alliance and there was confusion over party symbols. Why did this happen?

It was definitely a big challenge for us but we coordinated at every level… The CM himself went to several places — Delhi, Chandigarh, Jamshedpur — and campaigned for the INDIA bloc candidates… In Delhi, he campaigned for all three Congress candidates — Kanhaiya, Udit Raj, J P Agarwal… our party workers, MLAs also campaigned on ground… Yet, it is very difficult to convince people about symbols in 10-15 days… I think we suffered some loss in every seat due to this.”

Will AAP look at an alliance again for the Assembly polls?

This alliance was against Modi… We have already started working for the Assembly polls but there is no plan for any such alliance in Delhi.