The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is set to fight the Assembly elections with 24 contestants, including six in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Co-convener of the party’s Maharashtra unit, Kishore Mandhyan, says the dream is to win all the seats but one has to be realistic. The former political director to UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, Mr. Mandhyan tells The Hindu that AAP is aiming at much more than simply winning the seats.
The contestants AAP has chosen are mostly grassroots workers. Will that help in translating into votes?
Some of them are grassroots workers. Not all. There are two kinds of people who attract votes. People who have worked in those areas and people who have stature and appeal. Of course in our kind of system, it is believed that if you spend a lot of money and buy several people, that will get you votes. We don’t do the money bit. We are not a very big party, so we don’t have thousands of people with us but we have people who are very committed. A lot of people we have given the tickets to also happen to be from the party because we wanted to develop leadership. We are not looking at this year; we are looking at the long term. We had about 200 applications, but we chose about 24. So we were very careful. They come from different backgrounds. We looked around the State and thought about where we would be fighting elections next year: in zilla parishads, local bodies, municipal polls. So if we run in those constituencies, we will create a buzz with good candidates.
In Jogeshwari East, for example, AAP has fielded tribal rights activist Vitthal Lad against Shiv Sena leader Ravindra Waikar who has a strong base. Where does a candidate like Mr. Lad stand then?
We hope he does very well. We always wish our candidates won. But let us say if he doesn’t win, the name of the party will be popular, Mr. Lad will be known better in the area, and our message will get out. With changes in politics, the BJP is there today; we know what is happening in the Congress and NCP; people are going to ask who next. And sooner or later, they will see a serious party. We are in the process of where the BJP was in the ’80s. They had two seats in Parliament, we have four. We are in the Opposition in Punjab; we are in power in Delhi with a world class programme being implemented. We look at ourselves not only to come into power but also to become a very strong opposition because there is a vacuum.
A section believes that AAP will only divide votes but may not come out a winner.
Today if you do an analysis of the people who are running the BJP, Congress, NCP or Sena, they are playing musical chair. If the son is here, the father is there, and the wife is somewhere. There are about 25-30 feudal families in Maharashtra and they are rotating from one party to other. AAP is not dividing votes. It is, in fact, providing a solution, an alternative to this collusion between the four parties.
Where do you think the BJP stands in this election?
I believe that it has done some good work; it has some good people. But it doesn’t really have a way of reimagining and re-engineering Maharashtra. It talks about the ease of doing business, but what about ease of doing farming. The agrarian distress is a major thing. What about environmental modernisation, that can be a major job creator; it can clean up and preserve our soil, air, and make our people healthier. We are looking at Maharashtra not just as a State but as a State that has the potential of connecting beyond its immediate borders.
