Support, planned campaign helped Kejriwal’s cause

New Delhi: Arvind Kejriwal addressing over 110 meetings in just two months, restructring of the party, firming up of issues close to people, a well-planned campaign and volunteer support were among the major reasons for AAP’s landslide victory in Delhi assembly poll.
AAP chose its candidate with much thinking and even welcomed candidates from other parties considering the winnability factor.
After its rout in Delhi in the last Lok Sabha elections, the party was not only hit by a series of desertions of leaders like Shazia Ilmi but questions were raised within the party from senior leaders like Yogendra Yadav.
Despite the odds, the AAP chief sailed through the turbulence and rebuilt the party.
The party first decided to focus on Delhi and not contest upcoming Haryana and Maharashtra elections, despite opposition from senior party leaders and workers from the two states.
Restructuring the organisation and also involving its MLAs and other workers in party work, the party formed various frontal organisations like AAP’s youth, student’s and women wings, ST cell, Grameen Morcha, traders cell to tap and connect with voters.
It also decided to work on assembly seats where it had lost by a narrow margin in the last assembly election and regions like outer Delhi where it had fared badly. After the Delhi Assembly was dissolved, the party came up with an elaborate plan and chalked out a well-crafted campaign strategy with Kejriwal himself leading from the front.
Party sources say that since December last year, Kejriwal addressed more than 110 rallies. The AAP chief picked the right issues at the right time, especially the issue of electricity and water and inflation.
In Parliament, party MPs regularly raised issues related to the national capital.
Before the Assembly was dissolved, AAP ensured that none of its legislators defected.
Having learnt its lessons from the Lok Sabha debacle, AAP worked hard to shed the tag of a ‘dharna party’ and reinvent itself and come up with a ‘positive’ agenda.
It came up with Delhi Dialouge, through which it connected with people of different stratas of society.
It initially came up with Youth Dialouge in which Kejriwal promised a free wi-fi in the city. “The response was over-whelming, so we decided to do more Delhi Dialouge on women, in which we touched the aspect of security of women and installing CCTV cameras. This was backed by a well-planned print and radio ad campaigns,” said a party leader associated with Delhi Dialouge.
It had similar dialougues on health, electricity and water. The social networking team was also played a major role in spreading the party’s agenda.
“Over 6 million people connected with us on Facebook during our online campaign,” said Abhinav Buddhiraja, who is a part of AAP’s social networking team.
On the candidates front, barring a few, the party replaced almost all its former MLAs, and gave chance to new faces. Many of them were from within the organisation, especially, the frontal organisation.
It did not hesitate to give tickets to people who shifted their allegiance to AAP. Of the 67 MLAs AAP has, six MLAs are formerly from BJP while some from other parties. The party’s campaign committee gave regular feedback to its volunteers about the campaign work.
To back the campaign with finances, the party undertook innovative and a series of funding campaigns like ‘Dinner with Kejriwal’ and ‘Selfies with Kejriwal’. (PTI)