Punjab polls: AAP comes a cropper even in areas considered its ‘stronghold’

However, the dismal performance of the party was not limited to Khaira’s constituency alone. AAP could not put up a fight even from Talwandi Sabo which lies in the Malwa region and is considered a stronghold of the party. The AAP MLA from Talwandi Sabo, Baljinder Kaur, had won the elections earlier this year by a handsome tally of 54,553 votes. It was the same story in Bhikhi in Mansa constituency where AAP cut a sorry figure even though it’s MLA, Nazar Singh Manshahia, had polled more than 70,000 votes in the assembly polls.

The sorry state of AAP’s performance in its ‘strongholds’ continued at many other Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies.

The party failed to perform in Dirba, represented by its MLA Harpal Cheema, and it also came a cropper in Mullanpur Dakha which falls under the assembly constituency represented by former leader of opposition, HS Phoolka. On his part, Phoolka attributed strong arm tactics of the Congress for the poor performance. Apart from Dirba, which falls under the Lok Sabha contituency of Sangrur, represented by Bhagwant Mann, state president of AAP, the story was no different in Khanauri, Moonak and Cheema. Leaders within the party say that the poor performance in the Municipal Corporations of Amritsar and Jalandhar were more or less given because of poor cadre strength but the setback in Malwa region has been a cause for concern.

Speaking to The Indian Express, state co-president of AAP, Aman Arora said that AAP is just a three-year-old party in Punjab and if traditional parties like SAD and BJP wilted against the Congress onslaught of misuse of state machinery then AAP’s performance was on expected lines. “You can look at the track record of local bodies polls for the past few decades. It is always the party in power which sweeps them because of money power, muscle power and misuse of police. When the SAD-BJP alliance was in power, Congress had been swept away in these polls,” he said.

When asked if AAP would be doing an introspection on why it did not do well in areas represented by it’s MLAs, Arora said that while introspection is a must, yet, it should also be understood that participating in these elections was more important than just winning. “It would have been very easy for us to say that we are not ready for these polls and sat out of the elections. But that would have been a short-sighted policy. Where is our local leadership going to emerge from if we do not participate in such elections,” he said.

Arora said that AAP is working towards strengthening its party cadre from block level downwards. “We already have put a new structure in place till the block level and now we are working towards going down till the village level. We are putting new leadership in place and will continue to fight all elections including the zila parishad and panchayat polls,” he said.