NEW DELHI (TIP): The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is likely to redraw its strategy for contesting the Gujarat assembly elections, which is scheduled to be held later this year, and take a few steps back in favour of consolidating its position in Delhi and Punjab.

Just five months ago, the party launched an elaborate exercise in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state to spread its reach and contest the polls there as a direct challenge to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Its plan was to go all out in the western state, with senior leaders including Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia put in charge of different zones to oversee election preparations. The change in course will be discussed at the meeting of the party’s national executive – the highest. executive body of AAP comprising around two dozen top leaders – on Sunday, an AAP leader said.

This is the first such meeting after the Delhi municipal polls and the last round of assembly elections in which the AAP fell way short of its expectations of forming a government in Punjab and making electoral gains in Goa.

A series of crises, including infighting in the Delhi and Punjab units, have hit the party since. The last meeting of the NE was held in April 2016.

“A final decision on Gujarat will be taken in a meeting of those involved with the party’s expansion in the state with Arvind Kejriwal next week. It is now a question of how many seats to fight in the assembly elections there,” a party leader privy to the deliberations so far said.

Kejriwal, the party’s national convenor, has called the meeting on June 6. Before that, the party’s top leaders will deliberate on the change in course.

A senior leader said that the consensus within the party brass is to go slow on Gujarat, and therefore the national expansion plan, and look at “consolidating our position in Delhi and Punjab.” “Gujarat is no longer our priority.

Regaining lost ground in Delhi is of utmost importance. Punjab has given us a good opportunity by making us the principal opposition party. We need to build on that,” he added. Source: HT