The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Tuesday formed a committee to prepare its manifesto for the Delhi assembly elections, scheduled for February 8. The three-member committee will be headed by AAP national spokesperson Atishi who had closely worked with the Delhi government in the education sector and was also the party’s east Delhi candidate in the 2019 general elections.
The party will launch its manifesto between January 15 and 20, AAP’s Delhi convener Gopal Rai said Tuesday. Rai said the other members of the panel will be Jasmine Shah, vice-chairperson of the Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi; and Dr Ajoy Kumar, a former IPS officer and a former Lok Sabha MP from Jharkhand, who is also the national spokesperson of AAP.
“We have received many valuable suggestions during the town hall meetings held by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and the ongoing door-to-door campaigns. The committee will analyse and incorporate the best suggestions of people. The vision of AAP – development – will be kept in mind while preparing the manifesto,” Rai said.
The tagline that is likely to be taken in the party’s poll document will be “pichhle kaam rahenge jaari, naye kaam ki hain taiyyari (the old works will continue; preparations are on for new work)”.
Senior leaders of the AAP also said the party is likely to release the first list of candidates for the elections before January 14. The first list is likely to be of sitting MLAs who will get to fight for a second term, a senior party member said.
Campaign strategy
Addressing a press conference, Rai said the AAP’s campaign of distributing Delhi government’s report card, titled ‘AAP Ka Report Card’, launched on December 24, has reached nearly three million families and 15 million people. The report card features the top 10 achievements of the Delhi government in the past five years.
“By January 10, we are expecting these report cards to reach another 0.5 million families through our extensive door-to-door campaign. A total of 60,000 party volunteers have participated in this campaign. In addition, our MLAs have held 650 mohalla sabhas so far and another 50 such sabhas will be organised by January 10,” he said.
The AAP started the first phase of its election campaign on September 1, 2019, during which it held several janta samvaad (public interaction programmes) at the booth, assembly and the organisational level.
