The issue of drug menace and illegal mining is common to both the States, Punjab and Goa, said Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Bhagwant Mann.
Mr. Mann who was in Goa for last three days helping local AAP unit to gear for upcoming March 2017 Assembly elections, left Goa on Sunday after inaugurating AAP office in Bardez taluk of north Goa.
Expressing confidence that Punjab and Goa were heading for AAP rule post upcoming elections, Mr. Mann said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's public meeting in Goa on May 22 would change the manner in which Goan voters look at AAP as a political option.
"In Punjab you have illegal mining of sand, here it is iron ore. And coincidentally both States are going to polls one after the other," said Lok Sabha MP from Sangrur in Punjab.
He blamed the incumbent and past governments in Punjab for failing to handle the drug issue.
"The one way we believe the issue of drugs can be handled is proper counseling coupled with generation of employment opportunities for youth. Both have to go hand in hand. This is what we will work for in Punjab," Mr. Mann said.
Referring to electoral surveys on Punjab, Mr. Mann said in the polls next year in Punjab, the party was looking to put a better performance than in New Delhi where AAP won 67 out of 70 assembly seats last year decimating both BJP and Congress.
He felt that in Goa, a small State, people were still afraid of political vendetta and were perhaps reluctant to come out in open support of the AAP as of now, but was sure that the Mr. Kejriwal’s rally in this city on May 22 will be a turning point and people will shed their fear and openly support the AAP.
The AAP has already indicated that the party would contest Goa elections seriously and on its own in the 2017 State assembly elections putting itself before the people as an option to “failed” ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress which is yet to recover from its massive electoral defeat of 2012.
