The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), after making a stunning debut in the Delhi Assembly polls, said its next stop was the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
A party release issued on Sunday said “we wish to reiterate that the Delhi election is only the first step in our political journey. We are here to challenge the political establishment throughout the country. Our next mission would be to offer a genuine political alternative in the Lok Sabha elections 2014.”
AAP, led by Arvind Kejriwal, who rode into public glare as part of veteran social activist Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption stir and later parted ways to form his own political party, claimed that for the first time a party had broken away from the politics of caste and community vote banks and revived the culture of door-to-door canvassing.
Kejriwal defeated three-term Chief Minister Sheila Diskhit in the New Delhi constituency by over 20,000 votes.
The fledgling party said the outcome of the Delhi Assembly elections heralded the arrival of a “new force” in Indian politics, adding that its victory reaffirmed the wide disenchantment and disgust with the ruling UPA regime.
“The decimation of the ruling Congress party shows beyond doubt that there is yearning for change…. The spectacular debut of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) demonstrates that the aam aadmi of India is willing to trust alternative politics.” it said.
The party, barely a year old and pitted against “the collective might of the two big parties evident in their money and muscle power” said the real significance of its rise lay in the challenge it posed to “established politics.”
The party assured Delhi citizens that it “shall not take part in any political wheeling-dealing that might ensue following this “hung verdict”.
“We have made a solemn promise to the voters of Delhi that we shall neither seek nor offer support to any part of the corrupt political establishment of the country,” the release added.