Realising the clean image, or an invocation of it, works, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has invited IAS officers Ashok Khemka and Sanjeev Chaturvedi to join the party.
Khemka hogged media limelight after he cancelled the mutation of a land deal involving Congress president Sonia Gandhi's businessman son-in-law Robert Vadra in 2011.
Chaturvedi last year urged the Supreme Court to order a CBI inquiry into various scams detected by him during his seven-year tenure in Haryana. Both the officers have criticised the state government for persecuting them.
An AAP member in Haryana said the party chief, Arvind Kejriwal, has called Khemka and asked him to helm the party’s affairs in the state as its chief ministerial candidate.
Navin Jaihind, national executive member of party, who hails from Rohtak, said both the officers and several other government officers with a clean record are in touch with the party.
Unlike the Delhi assembly polls, where the party banked on social media networking campaigns and a big army of volunteers, it plans to target the hookah culture in rural belts to build its image.
Jaihind said, "When the elderly start discussing issues while smoking a hookah, the message flows among masses. Hookah works in Haryana the way Facebook and Twitter work among urban populations."
{{/usCountry}}Jaihind said, "When the elderly start discussing issues while smoking a hookah, the message flows among masses. Hookah works in Haryana the way Facebook and Twitter work among urban populations."
{{/usCountry}}He said the AAP leaders would launch a mass contact program in villages and speak to groups assembled over hookah about the message of clean and honest politics.
On the prevalent culture of voting in the name of caste and region, he said inflation and corruption are bigger issues for the common man than anything else.