The Aam Aadmi Party is expanding exponentially in Haryana and people consider it as the only viable alternative that can pull the state out of the “mess” of corruption and unemployment, senior party leader Sushil Gupta said on Saturday.
Under attack from rival parties for promising freebies to people to “grab power”, Gupta, who is the party’s in-charge for Haryana, said giving basic facilities to the public such as health, education and electricity should be the government’s primary responsibility and nobody should see any wrong in it.
The party’s stupendous performance in neighbouring Punjab earlier this year has come as a boost for its unit in Haryana, where it failed to taste success in the 2019 assembly polls.
“The AAP is now expanding exponentially in Haryana. We are setting up our unit in every village…people are looking at us as the only viable alternative which can pull the state out of the mess of corruption and unemployment, and improve the state of health and education,” Gupta, a Rajya Sabha MP, told PTI over phone.
Several leaders from rival parties in Haryana had joined the AAP after its victory in the Punjab assembly polls earlier this year. Former Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar, who had later switched over to the Trinamool Congress, and former Minister Nirmal Singh, were among those who joined the party.
With polls in Haryana due nearly two years from now, Gupta said his party has already started preparations.
The party is working to build a strong cadre and looking to reorganise the state unit in the coming months.
Highlighting that unemployment was one of the biggest challenges in Haryana, Gupta said the AAP’s state unit will hold a demonstration in Delhi on August 17 and demand the Manohar Lal Khattar government to come up with a roadmap to generate jobs.
Gupta also hit out at the Congress claiming that it was busy with infighting and only the AAP was playing the role of opposition in the state.
He said the 2024 polls in Haryana is a direct fight between the BJP and the AAP.
“In villages, there is a strong undercurrent in favour of the AAP. Resentment against the BJP-led dispensation is visible. The JJP has no standing, its core voters feel cheated. The JJP had got 10 seats in 2019, a vote which they got fighting against the BJP, but later on, they joined hands with the BJP. And everyone knows their stand during the farmers’ agitation,” he said.
Accusing the Khattar government of corruption, he said, “Where is zero tolerance towards corruption? Everyone knows corruption is rampant in this dispensation. Even for setting up an industry, ask anyone how many obstacles they have to face.”
On rivals targeting the AAP over its promise of delivering freebies, Gupta said what the party has assured are basic requirements that which everyone should have access to.
Last month, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal had defended his schemes on free education, health services, transport facility for women in buses, electricity and water, saying they were efforts towards laying the foundation to make India the number one country in the world.
In Punjab too, the AAP had made several promises before the polls. The Bhagwant Mann government is now giving 600 units of free power per billing cycle to every household.
Gupta said despite providing welfare schemes for the people, the Delhi government is in a “revenue surplus” because there is “no corruption”.
“Around the world in developed nations, health and education are free. Why (the rivals) do they want to deprive the people of this? One has to understand it is the primary duty of the government to provide these facilities,” he said.
