The Haryana unit of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) held a meeting of its volunteers at Sukhrali village here on Sunday to assess the situation and rebuild the party after its drubbing in the recent Lok Sabha elections.
AAP senior leader Yogendra Yadav, who had unsuccessfully contested from the Gurgaon Lok Sabha constituency, said the meetings will be organised in all districts of Haryana over the next 10-12 days in view of the party’s decision at its national executive meeting recently to rebuild the organisation. Through these meetings, the State leadership of the party seeks volunteers’ viewpoint on how to rebuild the party, the lessons learnt from the defeat in recent elections and the possible role of the party in the upcoming Assembly elections in Haryana.
Mr. Yadav said any decision on whether or not to contest the upcoming Assembly elections in Haryana would be taken after the process of holding meetings is over. “We aim to build committees at village, block and tehsil levels, which would eventually lead to reconstitution of district and national committees,” said Mr. Yadav, who was accompanied by the party’s State convenor Ashawant Gupta.
He said meetings were held in Faridabad and Mewat and so far the common refrain was that the party contested elections without proper organisational structure in place. He, however, added the volunteers were upbeat and not expecting much on the debut. “The party popularity graph went up in Haryana as in parts of the country after it won the Delhi elections and showed a sharp decline after Arvind Kejriwal resigned,” said Mr. Yadav. He, however, expressed disappointment that the party could not retain even its members in Haryana and ended up getting lesser votes than the total number of its members in the State.
On his defeat from Gurgaon, Mr. Yadav said he was expecting to finish third with over one lakh votes, but was disappointed to finish even behind the Congress.
