Days after the Aam Aadmi Party excluded the concerns of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community on gender and sexuality from its national manifesto, it has turned out that though an influential section of AAP wanted to incorporate the issues, the party, however, got last minute cold feet as it did not want to alienate the conservative votes in the country by its own admission.
According to LGBT members inside the party who were part of discussion with the LGBT community as well, the party decided to not mention the issues for “strategic perspective” to get the popular support and the numbers in Parliament.
The communication sent by a senior AAP leader said: “Arvind Kejriwal and all the top leaders have always said that personal liberty is of crucial importance to the vision of this party and we do not believe that State has any right to probe into private lives or sexual orientation of citizens if its consensual”.
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“There is a larger strategic perspective with regard to the number here. We need numbers in the Parliament if we are to do some thing about it,” explained the mail.