The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been facing setbacks in Haryana in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls due in April-May, which will be followed by the state Assembly elections slated for October this year. Days after ex-minister Nirmal Singh quit the AAP, there are indications now that another senior Haryana party leader may follow suit. Some close aides of the state AAP campaign committee's chairman Ashok Tanwar, 47, said that he was “upset” and may quit the party to join the ruling BJP soon. Tanwar's close associate Jagbir Jognakhera, Kurukshetra AAP district president, told The Indian Express that he (Jognakhera) and several other associates of Tanwar have already resigned from the party. Jognakhera said that “Tanwar has not been receiving due respect in the AAP,” alleging that “The AAP is in the hands of inexperienced people and workers are just numbers for them”. While Tanwar was not available for comments, AAP sources said he has turned “incommunicado” for the past few days. Dealing a blow to the AAP, its national joint secretary Nirmal Singh and his daughter and the party's state vice-president Chitra Sarwara resigned on December 28, 2023, to return to the Congress. State AAP president Sushil Gupta told The Indian Express that Tanwar remained a party leader and that the latter had not communicated any other decision to the party. Former Congress leader Ashok Tanwar had joined the AAP in the presence of its supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in April 2022. Tanwar, who belongs to the Dalit community, was once considered to be a rising star among young Congress leaders, and was close to Rahul Gandhi. In February 2014, the Congress leadership appointed Tanwar as the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) president. His bete noire in the state Congress was ex-CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who is currently Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the state Assembly. In September 2019, a month before the Assembly polls, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in a bid to avert a split in the state unit, replaced Tanwar with ex-Union minister Kumari Selja, another Dalit leader, as the HPCC chief. Subsequently, barely a fortnight before the polls, Tanwar resigned from the grand old party. After lying low for some time, Tanwar joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the presence of its chairperson and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee in November 2021. His innings with the TMC however virtually remained a non-starter. As Tanwar has been “estranged” from the AAP now, his close associate Anil Bhardwaj, who was the vice-president of the state AAP’s trader wing, has left the party. Bhardwaj said, “When Tanwar is upset, his associates will also quit the party.” On being pressed further, he said: “In the entire state, there are talks that he (Tanwar) would leave AAP.” Tanwar’s supporters maintain that he should have been nominated to the Rajya Sabha in the January 19 election to the Upper House from Delhi. Bhardwaj said: “If Tanwar, a Dalit face, was sent to the Rajya Sabha, it would have enhanced the AAP's image in Haryana, especially among the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Backward Classes (BCs) communities. Even state AAP president and sitting Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Gupta has not been renominated.” For the three Rajya Sabha seats in Delhi, the AAP has renominated MPs Sanjay Singh and Narain Dass Gupta while naming ex-Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal as its third nominee. Sources close to Tanwar said he met Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar in Delhi on Wednesday to “discuss the political situation in the state”. An impression has gained ground among the disgruntled AAP leaders and workers that the party has not been able to garner as much popularity as was expected after it formed its government in neighbouring Punjab in early 2022. “After the Punjab elections, many leaders had joined AAP with the hope that it may form a government in Haryana also. Kejriwal did not give much time for Haryana. There is a lot of interference from the AAP leaders or workers who have been deputed to Haryana from Uttarakhand, UP and Bihar. We can’t even display posters with our photos without approval from the high command,” claimed Bhardwaj. On November 5 last year, Kejriwal had visited Rohtak to administer oaths to party volunteers who were appointed as the AAP secretaries for villages and presidents of wards in towns and cities. Kejriwal will visit Jind on January 28 to address a rally called “Maha Badlav Sabha” to kick off the AAP's campaign against the alleged misrule of the BJP-led government. In 2019, the AAP had drawn a blank in both the Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls in the state.
