Mumbai, Aug 23 (IANS) The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is gearing up to contest the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections for the first time, a top party leader announced on Friday.
"This is the AAP's maiden foray in the state assembly election. Though the exact number of seats is yet to be finalized, we may tentatively target contesting around 60-70 constituencies where we have a good support base," AAP national spokesperson Preeti Sharma-Menon told IANS.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP had contested all the 48 seats in the state but failed to win any in the wake of the BJP wave then.
After the defeat, the party kept off the assembly elections that year and also the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in the state, both swept by the ruling NDA.
The AAP has constituted a 11-member Campaign Committee headed by Ranga Rachure and solicited applications from probable candidates across the state.
Explaining the decision, Sharma-Menon said that despite the electorate voting for change in the 2014 assembly polls, the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has proved "to be a colossal failure on all fronts".
"Once known as a progressive state, today it plagued with large-scale agrarian distress, farmland suicides, rising unemployment, poor law and order, growing crimes, widespread corruption, droughts, floods, economic slowdown," she alleged.
On the other hand, instead of holding the government accountable and ensuring respite to the suffering citizens, the Oppositon parties are in disarray and failed their basic constitutional obligations, said Sharma-Menon.
"The AAP was born out of a mass anti-corruption movement which has demonstrated - through the work by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal - that clean politics and a new political culture can deliver and set new records of good governance.
"Our revolutionary work in providing quality eduation, healthcare, cheapest electricity in the country, potable water for all, world-class public infrastructure and other achievements have received accolades from all over," she said.
Sharma-Menon assured that the AAP would aim to provide Maharashtra with a viable alternative and become the peoples' voice in speaking truth to power.
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