While pushing for fresh election, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is planning to initiate and intensify a campaign for fund mobilisation as its coffers have almost dried up after its disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha polls.
There was a time, especially during the peak period of Lok Sabha election campaign, when the party used to get several lakhs of rupees through online donation on a daily basis.
But its daily earnings on certain days in August have been in just a few thousands. On August 1, the party received all of Rs. 10,043 through online donation.
But the party does not consider the substantial decrease in its online donation graph after the Lok Sabha debacle a setback.
Kumar Gaurav, who is a member of the fund-raising team, said the party these days has not been asking for funds.
“It has happened because in the post-Lok Sabha results period we did not ask the general public for donation,” he said.
Need-basedAs far as the AAP is concerned, funds are need based, as the party had asked supporters to stop donating after its target of collecting Rs. 20 crore was met in the Delhi election, he said.
Mr. Gaurav said now that the party was pushing for fresh poll in the Capital, it would start a renewed campaign in the next few weeks for mobilising funds.
“We would certainly need resources to contest Delhi poll. We are thinking of exploring new options and ways of fund raising. We would soon be done with chalking out the fund-raising strategy,” he added.
In fact, the need for funds for the party was quite visible at Jantar Mantar when the AAP recently organised a public rally to build up pressure for fresh poll in Delhi.
There were three big stalls for donations at the rally venue.
Besides, there were volunteers moving with donation boxes in the crowd.
Mr. Gaurav said the party managed to raise over Rs. 50,000 during the rally.
“But the money does not matter much as it was an exercise to highlight the need for resources in the party, especially if it were to face another election,” he added.
Lately resources for the party have been crunching substantially and its graph of donation has come down in a big way, particularly since Lok Sabha poll results were declared.
On May 16, the party received Rs. 22 lakh, and since then it has been a downhill trend.
On the day of the Jantar Mantar rally, the party managed to rake in a total of Rs. 66,368 from 30 donors. It was in stark contrast to the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections – when the AAP only had to be in the news, for good or bad reasons, and funds used to pour in.
