The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday admitted that it had made mistakes that cost it dearly in the Lok Sabha elections.
Although the party won four seats in Punjab, it lost all the seven seats in Delhi. The party has drawn a blank elsewhere also even though it had put up candidates in 443 constituencies.
``[Party convener] Arvind Kejriwal has already admitted that quitting Delhi was a mistake made and we could have communicated about it with the people in a better way. We will take lessons from the mistakes made. We will discuss it within ourselves and go to people again and see how can we perform in future,’’ party leader Yogendra Yadav said while addressing a press conference here.
The party congratulated the Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi on the party’s landslide victory. “AAP respects the people’s verdict. People have big hopes from the government that it will tackle corruption, inflation, unemployment, women’s security and plunder of natural resources,” he said.
Mr. Yadav expressed “shock” at the Delhi results as the party could not win a single seat and said the party had “high hopes” in Varanasi, where Mr. Kejriwal was locked in a contest with Mr Modi and lost.
Despite the defeat, the AAP has increased its vote share from 30 to 33 per cent in Delhi and the Congress has become irrelevant in State politics, he added.
Expressing happiness about results in Punjab where the party won four seats, Mr. Yadav said the AAP had changed the political equations in the State and had become a State Party. There were a lot of lessons to be learnt and the party would introspect on them in the next few days but “the AAP is a party of the future,” he added.
According to party leader Prashant Bhushan, for the first time crony capitalism was made an election issue and the AAP showed transparency in election funding.