The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is looking to expand its electoral footprint and has been projecting Arvind Kejriwal as an alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lost its lone Lok Sabha seat on Sunday.
AAP candidate Gurmail Singh, president of the party in Sangrur district, failed to win the June 23 bypoll at Sangrur parliamentary constituency, the results of which was declared on Sunday. He lost to Simranjit Singh Mann, president of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), a splinter group of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) led by the Badal family, by a narrow margin of 5,822 votes.
Sangrur, considered the home turf of Bhagwant Mann, went to the polls after Mann took oath as Punjab chief minister on March 16. The defeat came a little over three months after the AAP registered a thumping win in Punjab.
“I humbly accept the verdict given by people of Sangrur. I am working day and night with honesty for the progress and prosperity of Punjab and will continue to work harder…I am your son and will spare no effort to brighten the future of your families,” Punjab chief minister and senior AAP leader Bhagwant Mann tweeted after the poll outcome.
The AAP, founded in 2012, debuted in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, just a year after contesting its maiden electoral battle in the Delhi assembly polls. It won four seats with a vote share of 25% in its first general elections in 2014, all of them from Punjab.
{{/usCountry}}The AAP, founded in 2012, debuted in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, just a year after contesting its maiden electoral battle in the Delhi assembly polls. It won four seats with a vote share of 25% in its first general elections in 2014, all of them from Punjab.
{{/usCountry}}Since then, the party’s presence in the Lok Sabha has been declining. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the AAP managed to win just one seat from Sangrur, with a vote share of 7.36%.
AAP members in the Rajya Sabha, however, have increased to 10 due to its victory in Punjab assembly elections in March. The party now has three Rajya Sabha MPs from Delhi and seven from Punjab.
The party is hopeful of a better performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. “The AAP is expanding its base beyond Delhi and Punjab. It is getting positive responses in Gujarat, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Goa, Assam and several other states,” a party functionary said on condition of anonymity. “So, we are hopeful that while focusing on state elections, the party will also garner some support in the 2024 general elections and the AAP’s representation in the Lower House will increase.”
It was not all bad news for the AAP on Sunday, as it won the Rajinder Nagar assembly constituency bypoll in Delhi. Party candidate Durgesh Pathak defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rajesh Bhatia, a former councillor, by a margin of over 11,000 votes. The polls were necessitated in the wake of AAP leader Raghav Chadha leaving the seat after being elected to the Rajya Sabha recently. Chadha was MLA from Rajinder Nagar since 2020.