The Aam Aadmi Party will have to wait much longer to have its victory celebrations. The party failed to get even a single seat on its home turf.
A sack of AAP caps and several cartons of water packets were kept on the lawns of the party office here for the large numbers of volunteers the party was expected to host on Friday. The volunteers did not turn up and neither did the party win any seat.
The spectacle of celebrations the AAP office saw on December 8 when it surprised the country with a stunning debut was replaced with upset volunteers watching BJP president Rajnath Singh’s interview.
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This was also an opportunity for senior party leaders to acknowledge the dismal performance by admitting that it was indeed a mistake that Arvind Kejriwal resigned as Chief Minister.
“Mr. Kejriwal had earlier admitted that quitting Delhi was a mistake. We could have communicated with the people in a better way,” said senior party leader Yogendra Yadav.
The former psephologist, who lost by a huge margin from the Gurgaon parliamentary constituency, acknowledged that the results were “shocking” as the party could not win a single seat in Delhi-NCR.
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All AAP candidates in Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats lost to the BJP. In the neighbouring Ghaziabad, too, AAP leader Shazia Ilmi lost badly, coming fifth.
“The fact remains that we could not win even one of the seven seats in Delhi and it has upset us. We did not get the results we expected,” added Dr. Yadav.
However, senior leader Manish Sisodia saw a silver lining in the defeat.
“Despite the lacklustre performance, the AAP has increased its vote share from 30 per cent to 33 per cent in Delhi and the Congress has become irrelevant in State politics. The increase in vote share happened even when a large chunk of the middle class and the upper middle class votes are known to have deserted us,” he said.
He rejected the possibility of the parliamentary polls having an impact on the Delhi Assembly polls. “This time round, people did not vote for their MP, but for their Prime Minister. But we will be back in the next Assembly polls here .”