Haryana ka Lal Kejriwal’s AAP fails to open account in his home state

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday suffered a humiliating defeat in Haryana, the home state of AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, with most of its candidates set to lose their security deposit.

According to the Election Commission data, the party was able to gain just 1.76% vote share in the elections when it contested on 89 out of 90 seats. This is much behind the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) with a vote share of 4.14%, but on par with the Bahujan Samaj Party (1.82%). Both the parties contested in an alliance on 53 and 37 seats, respectively.

AAP senior state vice-president Anurag Dhanda, one of the prominent party faces in the fray from Kalayat, stood at distant seventh position.

Dhanda, who actively campaigned in his constituency of Kaithal, was even behind three Independent candidates and was able to gain just 5,482 votes against Congress’ Vikas Saharan, who won with a margin of 13,419 votes.

Some candidates, Raj Kaur Gill (Ambala Cantt), Waseem Zaffer (Ferozepur Jhirka), Saroj Bala (Ganaur), Suneel Rao (Ateli) and others polled votes even less than none of the above (NOTA) option.

On Pehowa seat that Kejriwal termed as the “sasural” of Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, AAP candidate Gehal Singh Sandhu polled just 890 of the 1.28 lakh votes.

However, on some prominent seats like Jagadhri (Adarsh Pal Singh), Karnal (Sunil Bindal), Thanesar (Krishan Bajaj), Panchkula (Prem Garg), Rewari (Satish Yadav), Rohtak (Bijender Hooda) and other, AAP candidates finished at third position.

The trend has come as a setback for Kejriwal, who was projected as the face in the elections with a poll plank ‘Haryana ka Lal’ (son of Haryana).

Kejriwal is a native of Bhiwani district and faces another challenge in the Delhi elections four months later.

High-profile leaders, including Kejriwal, his wife Sunita Kejriwal, Delhi chief minister Atishi, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, general secretary Sandeep Pathak and cabinet ministers from Delhi and Punjab addressed 45 rallies in 15 days.

On July 20, Sunita made an emotional ‘Haryana ka Lal’ pitch while unveiling ‘Kejriwal ki 5 guarantee’ for Haryana, followed by the massive rallies, while her husband was in jail.

Other than relying heavily on Kejriwal’s Haryana connect, the party made promises on health, education, electricity, for women and youth.

However, it failed to reach a seat-sharing agreement with the Congress in Haryana despite the top leaders of both the parties pushing for it given its performance in the Lok Sabha elections in June.

The AAP contested the general election in alliance with the Congress as part of the INDIA bloc in Haryana, where it its state unit chief Sushil Gupta unsuccessfully contested from Kurukshetra.

Gupta had given a tough fight to BJP’s Naveen Jindal, a two-time MP from Kurukshetra, garnering a vote share of 42.6% despite losing by 29,021 votes. Jindal polled 45% of the votes.

In 2019 assembly polls, the party contested on 46 of 90 seats but polled just 0.5% of the overall vote share in the state.

The AAP had made its debut in the Haryana civic body elections by winning the Ismailabad municipal committee chief’s post in Kurukshetra district. AAP’s Nisha Kano Vangha had defeated BJP-JJP combine candidate Pooja Garg by a narrow margin of 101 votes.

Political observers believe that due to the lack of strong local leadership that could resonate with the state’s diverse electorate and help the party navigate the state’s complex caste dynamics, and absence of a robust organisational structure, AAP failed to breach the Haryana borders again despite electoral successes in bordering Delhi and Punjab.

Unlike Punjab, where AAP projected a local leadership that resonated with the public, Haryana lacks a charismatic leader with strong regional ties, despite AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal hailing from the state, they said.

At a gathering of the AAP municipal councillors in Delhi, Kejriwal said, “Let us see what the results are in Haryana. The biggest lesson of this is that one should never be overconfident in the elections.”