AAP made mistakes, need to introspect, admits Kejriwal

New Delhi: After his Aam Aadmi Party suffered a string of electoral defeats, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday admitted that the party had “made mistakes” and said there was need to “introspect and course correct.”

Based on his interactions with volunteers and voters in the last two days, the Delhi chief minister said it was clear that it was “time to go back to the drawing board” and added that there was “need for action and not excuses.” His remarks on Twitter were a departure from his shrill campaign, blaming rigged electronic voting machines (EVMs) for the recent electoral blows.

The AAP’s defeat in the civic polls has come on top of exceedingly poor show in the recent Punjab and Goa elections. In last week’s election, the AAP came second, managing only 48 of the 272 seats. The BJP, which held all three corporations of Delhi for the last 10 years, swept the elections; results for which were declared on Wednesday.

“In the last two days, I spoke to many volunteers and voters. The reality is obvious. Yes, we made mistakes but we will introspect and course correct. Time to go back to the drawing board. To not evolve will be silly,” Mr Kejriwal said in the screenshot of the note he posted on Twitter.

Following the recent poll debacle, Mr Kejriwal has been facing criticism from his party colleagues.

Some of the senior AAP leaders, including Kumar Vishwas and Lok Sabha MP Bhagwant Mann, have suggested the party to desist from holding EVMs as the sole reason for its drubbings. In fact, Mr Vishwas recently attributed the party’s poor show in the Delhi civic polls to “lack of” intra-party democracy and its failure to reach out to “voters and volunteers”.

“There has been a communication gap between volunteers and the party leadership. We should first decide whom did we start our fight with. (Is it) corruption, the Congress, Narendra Modi or the EVMs,” Mr Vishwas, a prominent AAP leader, had said in an interview to a TV news channel.

As the party went into a huddle, senior AAP leaders have come to the conclusion that the time is not right to compete against the “growing stature” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But this didn’t stop Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari from taking a jibe at Mr Kejriwal. He said that the Delhi chief minister has a record of wilfully committing mistakes and then seeking an apology.

“If you look back, whether it was fighting the Lok Sabha elections or forming a government in Delhi for 49 days, he has been knowingly committing mistakes and pulling the stunt of apologising,” Mr Tiwari said on Saturday.  

Earlier on Thursday, the AAP’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC) held over four-hour long meeting. The party’s apex decision-making body concluded that its rejection in the April 23 civic polls was partly due to the BJP’s gigantic electoral victory in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh last month. There, too, it was Mr Modi whose appeal was unmatchable.  

In his TV interview, Mr Vishwas had said that the Delhi chief minister should not have attacked Mr Modi over the surgical strikes. Last September, Mr Kejriwal had questioned the surgical strikes on terrorist camps PoK. In fact, going a step further, he had even asked proof of the same.

Meanwhile, Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari on Saturday said chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has a record of wilfully committing mistakes and then seeking an apology.

His remarks came after Mr Kejriwal admitted that his Aam Aadmi Party made “mistakes.”