Punjab and Goa out of way, AAP eyes Gujarat

NEW DELHI: A day after elections concluded in Punjab and Goa, AAP on Sunday launched its ‘Mission Gujarat’. The state goes to polls in the year-end. At a three-and-a-half-hour meeting attended by senior party members, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal asked everyone to commence preparations for Gujarat, apart from going full throttle for the upcoming civic elections in Delhi.
A party official said: “All party members who were in Goa and Punjab till now were asked to return to Delhi by Sunday for this meeting. The CM is leaving for Bangalore on February 7 to attend a naturopathy session. Before that, he wanted to set the ball in motion. Since Sunday morning, the parliamentary affairs committee members, other senior party functionaries, including those from the Delhi cabinet and the city team, held various meetings to discuss the course of action.”
For the corporation elections, where AAP will challenge the incumbent BJP, the campaign will focus on sanitation, said party sources. Party sources said that with Goa and Punjab elections out of the way, AAP can shift its focus fully to the civic polls in Delhi. “From Monday itself, we will hold meetings at ward levels and roll out the agenda,” said a party source.
In Gujarat, which is the turf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was CM of the state for 13 years before moving to the Centre, AAP is hoping to cash in on what it describes as the absence of a credible opposition. “It is AAP’s strategy to contest elections in those states that traditionally have seen a two-cornered fight and where the opposition is weak. BJP has been in power in Gujarat since 1998 and AAP has set up a strong local unit there,” said a senior party member.
“The national unit of the party will start working there with immediate effect while the Delhi unit focuses on the corporation elections. Subsequently, April onwards, the focus will be entirely on Gujarat, the last election for AAP in the current year,” he added.