300-plus AAP aspirants for 28 seats

BANGALORE: Youngsters willing to take the plunge and contest, students wanting to try their hand at politics... when members of the political action committee of AAP-Karnataka sat down to sift through 300-plus applications to finalize candidates to the 28 parliamentary constituencies, they were in for a surprise going by the sheer variety of aspirants.
"We had to reject so many applications because they were from people below 21 years and simply could not contest elections. In Shimoga, the candidate was picked from a public meeting. It's not about winnability. The idea after the Delhi experiment is not to choose between the devil and the deep-blue sea but between the clean and the corrupt," Prithvi Reddy, member, AAP national executive, told TOI.
Stating that the rigour exercised by AAP in finalizing candidates should not be construed as lack of candidates, he said: "It's ridiculous to say we are not finding candidates. We have too many criteria for the candidates to fulfil. In fact, we are not able to choose. And we have some fabulous candidates whose names will be out in a couple of days."
Admitting that AAP's five diktats for a candidate to even get into the interview stage for selection is posing a huge challenge, Reddy said: "For instance, how do we ensure that the candidate has come out clean on all the five requirements that we have laid down? We wouldn't be knowing him/her personally. It's a huge challenge. We check and re-check the applications. Throughout India, we have over 7,000 applications from citizens keen on contesting the 2014 elections."
Reddy said they will field candidates in all 28 parliamentary constituencies of the state to give the citizen the right to choose a clean candidate. "By not fielding candidates in all the constituencies, we will be denying the right to the citizen which is unfair. We understand our limitations. AAP has no model to follow. We recognize the fact that we do not have a strong organizational structure in Karnataka. Not a single person in our first list is a politician. They are achievers in their own right. It's not about being the best, it's about being suitable. That's the challenge," he asserted.