Buoyed by Punjab success, AAP raring to ‘sweep’ Karnataka polls

Buoyed by its landslide win in the Punjab Assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) plans to go big in Karnataka, too.

On Wednesday, the party virtually sounded the poll bugle for the 2023 Karnataka Assembly elections with former Bengaluru police commissioner and new inductee Bhaskar Rao praising the AAP for its “ideological wealth”.

Rao, who quit as an IPS officer just last month and joined the AAP in Delhi on Monday, lamented that a naturally resourceful state like Karnataka was bogged down by misgovernance.

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In particular, he slammed the “criminal waste” of taxpayers’ money and sought to know why people were still suffering even though the state government claims to be spending crores of rupees on various projects and schemes.

AAP state president Pruthvi Reddy said that there was a “persistent” demand from people for the party to contest the Assembly elections in Karnataka. “The time to fulfil the demand has come now,” he said.

Reddy said the party had already shortlisted candidates for 145 BBMP wards (out of 198). Citing an opinion survey by a professional agency, Reddy claimed the AAP stood second in Bengaluru, next to the BJP by “a mere 2 per cent points”.

The survey, he went on, covered a sample of 25 people per ward, or roughly about 5,000 people in the city. The sample was representative enough and covered all the demographics, he insisted.

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