ArrayNew Delhi : The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is set to win about 40 seats and could even cross the 50-mark in the Delhi assembly election, party leader Yogendra Yadav said Thursday.
Yadav, however, told CNN-IBN in an interview that the AAP was not over confident but was sure that the pro-AAP sentiments in the capital couldn’t be reversed ahead of Saturday’s ballot for the 70-member house.
“I will not be surprised if AAP wins 50 seats,” he said. “At the moment (we are) clearly winning about 40 seats. If this trend continues, I won’t be surprised if we touch or even cross 50.”
He said the AAP would have found the election very tough had it been held in July 2014 — just after the Lok Sabha polls in which the AAP was routed across the country except in Punjab where it won four seats.
The AAP and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have emerged the principal contestants in the Delhi election, relegating the Congress, which governed Delhi for 15 years until 2013, to the third spot.
According to Yadav, BJP’s decision to induct Kiran Bedi, India’s first woman police officer, into its ranks and make her the chief ministerial candidate to take on AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal had backfired.
“Kiran Bedi has actually further deepened the downslide for the BJP,” he said, adding it was too late in the day to reverse this trend.
Yadav admitted that the AAP was in a bad shape just after Kejriwal resigned in February 2014 as Delhi’s chief minister after 49 days in power and also post the Lok Sabha election.
He said that in the last four to six weeks, those who were upset with the AAP had substantially changed their minds and were willing to give Kejriwal and the AAP another chance.
Yadav, however, admitted that he was worried vis-a-vis the BJP’s “polling booth tricks” on election day. “They know much more about it (than us).”
Yadav said the rise of the AAP after the Kejriwal resignation and the Lok Sabha rout was “a story of one of the most remarkable comebacks” for any political party in India.
He denied that the AAP had promised the moon to voters to get votes. “There is a difference between promising something to everyone and promising the moon.”
Yadav said the Congress, which finished behind the AAP in all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, was in a state of free fall and won’t be able to win even the eight assembly seats it won in 2013.