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Karnataka needs a ‘thoroughly new model’: AAP state VP says it will do better in state Assembly polls

Bhaskar Rao said the five AAP candidates who emerged victorious in the Gujarat polls had won on their own reputation, not backed by "money and muscle power"

ByPTI

Published Dec 09, 2022 | 4:14 PM ⚊UpdatedDec 09, 2022 | 4:14 PM

AAP hopes to lead the Karnataka Assembly poll after winning the Delhi poll. Representative image. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is scouting for good candidates who can win on their own reputation and can focus on about 60 constituencies in the Assembly elections in Karnataka just a few months away.

AAP is upbeat after wresting control of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) from the BJP and the noticeable show in the Gujarat Assembly election, say party leaders in Karnataka.

Merit over money and muscle

The party’s state unit vice-president, Bhaskar Rao, told PTI on Friday, 9 December, that the five AAP candidates who emerged victorious in the Gujarat polls were not backed by “money and muscle power” and that they won on their own reputation. “We would like to pursue that line here (in Karnataka),” he said.

While the party would field “new and good candidates” in all the 224 Assembly constituencies in Karnataka, where the polls are due by May, it would focus on 50 to 60 “winnable” segments.

“We are very optimistic that, in Karnataka, we will make a better mark than what we have done in Gujarat,” Rao said, adding that campaigning by AAP’s national convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for Karnataka Assembly polls would definitely boost the party’s “winnability, acceptability and chances”.

Hope for Karnataka

Karnataka needs a “thoroughly new model”, he said. The Congress, BJP and coalition models have been “rejected”, according to him.

“We will concentrate on people (candidates) with good reputation,” added Rao, a former Bengaluru police commissioner.

Also Read: BJP will retain power in Karnataka after 2023 polls, says CM

On the contention in some quarters that AAP has eaten into Congress’s votes in the recent Assembly elections in Gujarat, he said that nobody stopped the Mallikarjun Kharge-led party from consolidating their votes.

He also said, “We are buoyed that Modi magic has not worked in Himachal Pradesh. So, it cannot work here (Karnataka) also.”

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