AAP launches election campaign with roadshow in Himachal Pradesh

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Punjab counterpart, Bhagwant Mann, on Wednesday kick started the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s election campaign in Himachal Pradesh with a massive roadshow in Mandi district and an appeal to voters to choose their party if they want to eradicate corruption from the state.

Himachal Pradesh is set to go to the polls at the end of this year along with another Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state Gujarat. AAP has also decided to contest the Shimla municipal elections, the schedule for which is expected very soon.

“If you want to get rid of corruption in Himachal Pradesh, elect AAP candidates to form an honest government in the coming elections,” Kejriwal told voters and party supporters at Seri Chowk in Mandi district, which is the hometurf of incumbent chief minister Jai Ram Thakur.

AAP supporters don’t know “how to do politics” but “how to do work and wipe out corruption”, the party’s national convenor said. “We know how to create good schools, excellent hospitals, uninterrupted water and power,” he added.

Kejriwal claimed that the party first eradicated corruption from Delhi, and now the Bhagwant Mann-led government has wiped it out from Punjab within 20 days of its formation.

Prior to his address, Kejriwal and Mann held a massive roadshow from Victoria Bridge to Seri Manch, during which the latter attacked both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and likened them to the British colonials.

“British enslaved India for about 200 years. Now BJP and Congress are enslaving us turn by turn in installments for five years,” Mann said.

Buoyed over its poll victory in Punjab, the AAP has started to draw up plans for Himachal Pradesh, as it shifts its focus to the poll-bound hill state where politics has largely remained bipolar except a few instances.

Last month the AAP had appointed an eight-member team to expand its organisation and to devise poll strategies in the hill state. Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain, who has been made the election in-charge, has already visited the state several times since AAP’s victory in the Punjab polls.

“People want a change and AAP is a better third option,” Salim Khan, an activist who arrived from Chamba for the roadshow, said.

The BJP claimed the AAP roadshow was a total flop. “Going by the kind of clamour they had created, the gathering was not that large. Also, the kind of politics they do in Delhi and Punjab is not possible in Himachal,” state BJP chief Suresh Kashyap said.