The Aam Aadmi Party will be contesting the Uttar Pradesh civic body and panchayat elections this year and the Assembly polls due in 2022 on its own as, buoyed by past success in UP civic body and panchayat polls, and the recent polls in Gujarat, it believes there is now a wide acceptance for the model of governance it has demonstrated in Delhi.
Senior party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, in an interview to Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar, spoke about how the party is “entering UP politics with a new ideology, thought process and model.” He said the way was gaining across the country and people were appreciating its work shows that it has immense potential in UP as well.
Acknowledging that the farmers’ agitation has created an atmosphere against the BJP, especially in western UP, which many parties want to cash in on, Singh said despite this his party was not likely to get into the intricacies of any alliance.
He also declared that BJP would go to the voters with the Delhi model of governance. “Why can’t people in UP get free power, good education or mohalla clinics or good hospitals." He also promised that AAP would make timely payment to the nearly 48 lakh sugarcane farmers in UP ensuring they “get the money before they reach their home from the mill”.
While not spelling out how in UP the AAP intended to woo the Dalit voters from Bahujan Samaj Party or the Muslim and Yadav voters from Samajwadi Party, which were key in its winning the Delhi polls in 2015 and 2020, Singh said the party did not believe in such politics and wanted to represent all the 24 crore people of UP.
Referring to numerous atrocities on Dalits, Muslims and backward classes in the state, he said, “it is essential to hurt BJP’s thinking if they are discriminating on the basis of religion or caste or oppressing a particular section of society.”
Singh also accused BJP of not inviting the President of India, Ramnath Kovind, to either the prayers for the Ram Temple foundation stone laying ceremony in Ayodhya or for the new Parliament building in New Delhi, as part of the redevelopment of the Central Vista project. “What was the reason? So for your politics of vote, you can make a Dalit the President of the country but not have him sit with you in a `puja’ (prayer). This is their mentality,” he said.
On the accusation against AAP that it deserts communities and people who support it in their hour of need or grief, Singh denied the charge saying, “This is not the case. Wherever a situation arose where our intervention was needed as a political party, we always raised questions.”
He also denied the charge that the party did not stand by the people falsely accused of violence during the farmers’ protest on January 26, saying: “To the contrary, we are being criticised – that Kejriwal came forward to say that the attack on Red Fort was not carried out by the farmers, but by BJP.”
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