BHUBANESWAR: After the Gujarat experiment, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has decided to contest all the 21 Lok Sabha and 147 Assembly seats in Odisha as it eyes to take advantage of the vacant Opposition space in the state.
The decision was announced by Sandip Pathak, national secretary (organisation) of the party in New Delhi on Wednesday following a meeting with state convenor Nishikant Mohapatra and other leaders. Sources said that Mohapatra had a meeting with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday to discuss the issue. Odisha along with Kerala will be next focus states of the party in the coming elections.
Pathak will visit by the month-end and announce the decision at a public meeting at Bhubaneswar. Several leaders from other political parties are expected to join the AAP at the meeting. AAP won five out of 182 seats in the Gujarat Assembly in the last elections with a vote share of 12.92 per cent.
Party sources are optimistic of a good performance in Odisha as in Gujarat it had got only seven months time. Though the Odisha unit of the AAP was formed 10 years back and has contested elections in the past, the party was not fully involved. This time the national leadership will be involved in Odisha, Mohapatra said.
AAP has prepared the ground in Odisha by completing constituency-level meetings in 132 out of 147 seats and set up organisational units in 271 blocks out of 314 blocks. In the coming days several senior leaders of the party will visit to hold organisational meetings in different parts of the state, he added.
With the continuous failure of Congress in the state, it is expected that AAP will eat into the party’s base here as was the case in Gujarat and other states. Mohapatra maintained that AAP will make a powerful impact in state’s electoral politics in the coming days.