HAVING conquered Delhi and Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) saw Haryana – sandwiched between the two – as its natural destination. However, in another sign that things have not gone as per the ambitious plans of the party, it announced Wednesday that it was dissolving its entire state unit. This comes less than a year after the AAP undertook a similar exercise in Haryana in March 2022, after which it divided its state unit into four zones. Since then, its prospects have not improved much. While it finished second in the civic polls held in November 2022, where the Congress and Jannayak Janata Party did not contest on party symbols, it lost its security deposit in the high-profile Adampur bypoll, finishing even behind the INLD to its disappointment. The AAP has announced that it will come up with a new organisation structure in three months and that by April-end, the state unit would bear a fresh look, well in time for the 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. Amidst successive poll setbacks, the AAP hasn't had a state president either for over two years, with its last chief, Naveen Jaihind, having left the party. Its biggest organisation exercise has been a membership drive held last year that reportedly got it 2 lakh-odd new members in Haryana. Announcing the dissolution of the Haryana unit, including those holding all posts at the state, zone, district, Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha levels, AAP senior leader Anurag Dhanda said work on the new structure shall begin with meetings on January 29-30. AAP sources said party national general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Sandeep Pathak shall be chairing the meetings. AAP Rajya Sabha MP and Haryana in-charge Sushil Gupta said the dissolution “is a good thing to infuse new strength among party workers”. Claiming there were no specific reasons behind the decision, Gupta added: “The party thought that the state unit should be reorganised in a democratic manner, for which first it had to be dissolved. Sometimes what happens is that if a few people are changed, that leads to resentment. If the entire state unit is dissolved, then nobody has any reason to complain.” Gupta also said that the reconstitution might see many party workers promoted to higher positions, and ultimately lead to the appointment of a state president. There could be another major membership drive, he said. Expecting to make it big in the state, the AAP had set up offices in almost all the 22 districts of Haryana and in a majority of the 90 Assembly constituencies. Gupta said it was unlikely that these would be shifted. The Congress gave itself credit for the AAP move, claiming that the “phenomenal” strength that the party had got after Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra had forced AAP to "pack its bags" from Haryana. "In the past four months, under the leadership of Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Udai Bhan as PCC president, over 15 former MLAs and several leaders from various parties have joined the Congress in Haryana,” Congress leader Deepender Hooda said. In the 2019 Haryana Assembly polls, which it fought in alliance with the JJP, the AAP had fielded candidates in 46 of the 90 seats. A majority of them secured less than 1,000 votes and lost their security deposits, with the party getting just 0.48% of the vote share. It had later broken off its tie-up with the JJP, and the latter had joined the BJP in a post-poll alliance and government. The AAP might have also taken its cue to go in for a major overhaul in Haryana from nearby Himachal Pradesh, where in the recent Assembly polls, the party got barely 1.10% of the votes.
