Hyderabad: Despite having announced 300 candidates from over 500 constituencies across India, the Aam Aadmi Party’s top leadership is yet to decide on Hyderabad’s share of seats in the upcoming general election and the urban local body elections.
The party’s Telangana and Andhra campaigning committees have already sent two lists of candidates, but they have yet to be approved.
Addressing a crowd of over 4,000 people at the first Telangana Convention of the Aam Aadmi Party, AAP leaders Ajit Jha and Pankaj Gupta outlined the party’s plans for the state.
At a press meet later, they explained the delay in announcing candidates by saying that elections were being held at a later date in AP compared to other states and they were concentrating on the other states first.
“The election in Telangana is on April 30, whereas in Andhra it is on May 7. The other states have it a little earlier, so we are concentrating on those states first. Also, we cannot finalise candidates until we meet them personally. We have now gathered lots of feedback and information from here, which we will take back to our other party members and announce the list in two days,” said Mr Gupta, an engineer by profession, who was very closely associated with the Jan Lokpal movement.
Prof. Jha said, “We’ve received 12,000 applications for the Lok Sabha elections. This is a good start for a new party. After touring Guntur and Hyderabad in the last two days, we are confident that AP also has a strong support base for the AAP and we can claim a good perce-ntage of victory here.”
The press meet, however, turned very embarrassing as many party workers caused disruption by shouting slogans and banging on the doors and windows of the press meet venue to be let inside. When the-re was no end to the ruckus, the members were allowed into the venue and the press meet was called off halfway.
Many workers said members who were part of the earlier coordination committees, which were later dissolved to form the campaigning committees post the announcement of the state’s bifurcation, were not recognised and taken into these later committees.
