After losing all the seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital, Aam Aadmi Party’s top leadership held an introspection meeting with party convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and concluded that EVMs can’t be blamed as there was an undercurrent in favour of the BJP.
In the meeting held on Thursday evening, the party’s top brass decided that voting machines can’t be a reason for the defeat, as polarisation of votes favoured the BJP, sources told news agency ANI.
Besides Kejriwal, other top leaders including deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Gopal Rai and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh were present in the meeting.
AAP candidates from Delhi – Atishi, Raghav Chadha and Pankaj Gupta – were also a part of the huddle. The leadership also decided that no one can be held responsible for the drubbing owing to the public mood strongly favouring the BJP.
The AAP, which had won 67 out of the 70 Delhi Assembly seats in 2015, slipped down to the third position with a vote share of a little over 18 per cent, while BJP got over 56 per cent and Congress over 22 per cent in the 17th general elections.
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The party’s most popular candidate, Atishi, who contested from East Delhi barely managed to save her deposit with 2,19,328 votes, far behind BJP’s Gautam Gambhir who won the seat with 6,96,156 votes.
BJP won all seven seats in Delhi, not only repeating the 2014 feat but also bettered its vote share by nearly 10 per cent.
Kejriwal will hold a meeting with party volunteers on May 26 to chalk out a strategy for assembly elections to be held early next year.
(With ANI inputs)