Shazia Ilmi, who quit Aam Aadmi Party in May 2014 and joined the BJP last month, visited Dr. Kiran Bedi at her residence in Uday Park after the party's crushing defeat and said Arvind Kejriwal has shown a “promised land” to the common man which brings him big responsibility to realise all those promises.
“For months now, Kejriwal has been showing a promised land to the public. People want to experience the promised land and therefore, voted for him,” she said.
After meeting Dr Bedi over coffee, Ms Ilmi was candid about AAP’s ability to touch people and “take their message to the masses till the end”.
“I feel the message AAP was giving to people, they took it to the end. For that they should be given credit,” she said while adding that she herself never wanted to contest polls after witnessing sabotage within AAP. On how Ms. Bedi was holding herself, Ms Ilmi said, “Kiran Bedi ji is calm. She knows that the party was always with her. She has lot of projects, she is writing a book too. I deliberately did not touch this topic. We just had a cup of coffee.”
She denied that the results were reflective of Modi wave losing its strength in Delhi. Ms Ilmi said AAP’s landslide victory can be attributed to the fact that it had only Delhi to focus on while BJP is a national party with so much to take care of. “By virtue of having so much more on their plate, BJP could not focus only on Delhi while Kejriwal had only Delhi to look at,” she said.
She was also appreciative of AAP’s campaign as she said, “BJP was not away from the ground reality but Kejriwal’s message was clean, sustained and reached people. For over four months, he was on the radio, his messages were there with lot of positive campaigning. BJP’s system was may be not up to the mark.”
“You see, elation happens, euphoria happens but it also dies down. When you tell people you will install CCTVs across the city, you have to tell people where would the money come from?” she said.
