Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann departed for Delhi on Tuesday to meet Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal. The meeting, which will also include Punjab MLAs, comes in the wake of AAP’s crushing defeat in the recent Delhi assembly elections.
In these elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged victorious, securing 48 out of 70 seats. AAP, which had previously dominated the 2020 elections with 62 seats, faced a significant setback, only managing to secure 22 seats this time. The BJP’s win marks a return to power in Delhi after 27 years.
The Congress party, which had hoped for a resurgence in the capital, failed to win a single seat, marking its third consecutive defeat in Delhi. The party, which had governed the city for 15 years until 1998, once again registered a zero tally in the assembly elections.
One of the most notable results of the election was BJP’s Parvesh Verma’s victory in the New Delhi seat, where he defeated former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by over 4,000 votes.
Following this significant loss in Delhi, Punjab is now the only state under AAP’s governance, making it crucial for the party to maintain unity within its Punjab unit. The BJP, however, has already predicted that the AAP government in Punjab may soon collapse. BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh said on Monday that the “countdown has begun” for the fall of the AAP government in Punjab, labeling the party’s state unit as a “house of cards” that will soon collapse. He also pointed out that the Delhi model, which the Bhagwant Mann government had hoped to implement in Punjab, has been rejected in Delhi.
BJP MP Praveen Khandelwal also criticized Kejriwal, claiming that the people of Delhi had “punished” him for the state’s poor condition, and warned that Punjab might face a similar situation if the AAP government does not address its challenges.
