Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party convener Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is afraid of the AAP and that he (Modi) would suffer in the Lok Sabha elections.
“Modiji is afraid of AAP as the way we have performed in Gujarat, like challenging a tiger in its den and the way people supported us..,” Kejriwal told reporters outside the state hangar when asked about ruling BJP targeting opposition leaders in the country.
In last year’s Gujarat elections, the BJP won a record 156 seats in the 182-member house. AAP opened its account in the state with five seats and a vote share of nearly 13 per cent.
Kejriwal along with his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann arrived in Bhopal to address a rally of party workers amid AAP’s attempt to expand its base in MP, where assembly polls are due later this year. The party has declared that it would contest in all 230 constituencies in the state.
Since Independence, Kejriwal said, the Congress ruled the state for 45 years while the BJP has been at the helm for nearly 30 years. People are fed up with them as nothing happened and there was no alternative available in the state, he said.
“Now, AAP is a viable option for them,” said Kejriwal.
Asked about next year’s Lok Sabha polls, he said Modi will suffer in the parliamentary elections this time.
AAP, which swept the Punjab polls last year, is buoyed up by its performance in the Madhya Pradesh urban local body polls in July-August 2022, where it claimed it had garnered 6.3 per cent of the vote share.
It had fielded 1,500 candidates for local body polls and the party managed to win the mayor's post in Singrauli in the state's Vindh region.