Haryana’s Lal Kejriwal’s AAP fails to open account in his home state

The Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday suffered a humiliating defeat in Haryana, the home state of AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, with most of its candidates set to lose their security deposit.

According to the Election Commission data at 3pm, the party was able to gain just 1.76% vote share in the elections when it contested all 90 seats. This is much behind the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) with a vote share of 4.28%, but on a par with the Bahujan Samaj Party (1.71%). Both the parties contested in an alliance on 53 and 37 seats, respectively.

AAP senior state vice-president Anurag Dhanda, one of the prominent faces in the fray from Kalayat, was trailing at sixth position as the counting of votes was underway.

Dhanda, who actively campaigned in his constituency of Kaithal was even behind two Independent candidates and was able to gain just 3,903 votes against Congress’ Vikas Saharan, who was leading with 40,454 votes.

The trend has come as a setback for Kejriwal, who was projected as the face in the elections with a poll plank ‘Haryana ka Lal (son of Haryana)’.

Kejriwal is a native of Bhiwani district and faces another challenge in the Delhi elections four months later.

The AAP failed to reach a seat-sharing agreement with the Congress in Haryana despite the top leaders of both the parties pushing for it given its performance in the Lok Sabha elections in June.

The AAP contested the general election in alliance with the Congress as part of the INDIA bloc in Haryana, where it its state unit chief Sushil Gupta unsuccessfully contested from Kurukshetra. Gupta had given a tough fight to BJP’s Naveen Jindal, a two-time MP from Kurukshetra, garnering a vote share of 42.6% despite losing by 29,021 votes. Jindal polled 45% of the votes.

The AAP had made its debut in the Haryana civic body elections by winning the Ismailabad municipal committee chief’s post in Kurukshetra district. AAP’s Nisha Kano Vangha had defeated BJP-JJP combine candidate Pooja Garg by a narrow margin of 101 votes.