Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, has confessed that his party made mistakes that resulted in a series of electoral debacles in the recent weeks.
This is the first public admission by Kejriwal since the results for assembly and civic body polls were announced.
Taking to Twitter, Kejriwal said, “In the last 2 days, I spoke to many volunteers and voters. The reality is obvious. Yes, we made mistakes but we will introspect and course correct. Times to go back to drawing board. To not evolve would be silly. We owe that to voters and volunteers. Need is action and not excuses. It’s time to get back to work. And even if we slip from time to time, the key is to find the reserves to hold and pull ourselves up. The people deserve nothing less. The only thing constant is change. Jai Hind.”
Kejriwal’s party faced disastrous results in Goa in March when AAP could not win a single seat. Contrary to its expectation to form the government in Punjab, the party could barely manage to win 20 plus seats in alliance with Lok Insaaf Party.
In Delhi, where it won a historic mandate in February 2015, the party’s candidate lost his deposit in Rajouri Garden assembly bypoll earlier this month.
And, in the just concluded civic body polls, AAP could emerge victorious on just 48 seats out of 270 plus wards.
While assessing the poll debacle for AAP, Janta Ka Reporter’s editor-in-chief, Rifat Jawaid, had written on 14 April, “Going forward, if Kejriwal and AAP need to stay relevant in politics, this will require an urgent course correction. In corporate jargon, it’s called returning to the drawing board. Kejriwal must return to being the leader he was before the 2015 assembly elections. He ought to become a hands-on politician and stop surrounding himself by so-called ‘advisors’, who, truth be told, are nothing but a bunch of sycophants.”