The state unit of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday claimed it has received over 4,000 new applications for membership following the party’s landslide victory in the Delhi Assembly polls recently. “While around 800 applications have been processed, 3,000 to 4,000 are yet to be scrutinised. At the moment, we have around three lakh members in Bengal. Among them, 70,000 are active members of the party,” said senior AAP leader Atul Chaturvedi during a victory rally taken out by the party at Metiaburz. [related-post] He was the party’s candidate from Kolkata (North) in the last Lok Sabha elections. Though AAP’s national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said that he will concentrate only on Delhi for the time being, Chaturvedi said the state unit wants to contest the 2017 Assembly elections in Bengal. He claimed that after the Delhi win, many workers from BJP and Trinamool have expressed their willingness to join AAP. “We will have to develop our political infrastructure and get an approval from the party’s parliamentary committee in Delhi. We have written to them. Soon, they would visit the state to help set up the infrastructure here,” Chaturvedi said.
