In Punjab, AAP fights within and outside

CHANDIGARH : As the Punjab assembly elections draw closer, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its leadership are grappling with a host of political skirmishes — both within and outside. The party, which is the newest entrant on the Punjab political scene — dominated largely by the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and the Congress over decades — is facing as much a challenge from its own leaders and activists as it is facing from the two better-established parties.
Breakaway factions, leaders and even volunteers are making things difficult for the AAP even though its national leadership, mainly national convener Arvind Kejriwal and senior leaders Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak, is still hopeful that the party will comfortably sail to power in Punjab.
The AAP started the year 2016 on an upswing, especially in the first quarter. Poll surveys and the party’s own political calculations gave it anything from 75 to over 100 seats in the 117-member assembly.
The ruling Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance, which has been in power in Punjab since 2007, and the Congress, were even feeling concerned at that time about the forward march of the AAP.
But in the second half of this year, the Punjab AAP virtually started imploding.
The party, which has refused to project a chief ministerial face for the assembly polls even now — giving credence to grapevine that Kejriwal himself wanted the job so that he could handle the central government and national politics from a better pedestal than Delhi — came to a situation that its Punjab convener and most visible face, Sucha Singh Chhotepur, was unceremoniously suspended from his post in August, which later led to his exit from the party.
Chhotepur, who nurtured the party right from the day of its conception in Punjab, was shown the door after the emergence of a video clip in which an AAP worker was shown giving money to him. Even before this, Chhotepur was being sidelined in Punjab affairs with Delhi leaders like Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak calling the shots.