Surat businessman Mahesh Savani joins AAP ahead of Gujarat assembly elections

Mahesh Savani, a Surat-based businessman and a social worker, joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday, ahead of the state assembly elections as the ruling party in Delhi is aiming to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state and take its national ambition further.

"The AAP is like a vacant plot in Gujarat, where a house of new and modern politics of the state can be built. To lay the foundation of this, we welcome Mahesh ji to the Aam Aadmi Party," senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia said at a press conference in Surat. "In Gujarat, the AAP is growing day and night at quadruple speed," Sisodia, who is the deputy chief minister in Delhi, said.

Sisodia also praised AAP councillors, who were elected through civic body elections in February. "Now it is not only the work of Delhi, but the work of Gujarat has also started speaking… the work of the councillors has started speaking," he said, adding, "Impressed by all that, Mahesh bhai decided to join the AAP family."

Addressing Gujarat's residents, Sisodia also said that the state hopes that these people of the AAP "will realise the dream of new and successful politics," which the Congress and the BJP have been promising for over the years.

Speaking on the next year's assembly elections, Sisodia said it "will be held between the party that is sitting in the middle of a power and a party that came out of the public." "Wherever you go on seeing Aam Aadmi Party, there you will go on forgetting the Congress and BJP, it is our claim," he also asserted.

After making inroads in civic body elections by winning 27 out of 120 seats, the AAP is planning to out the BJP in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state. In June, AAP national convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that the party will contest all seats in the Gujarat assembly elections to be held next year. The Delhi-based AAP is taking small steps to achieve its national ambition. It has already announced its plan to contest in assembly elections of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh.

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