AAP candidates lose deposits, and face, in Haryana

CHANDIGARH: The Aam Adami Party (AAP) put up a miserable performance in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Haryana and it is for a second time that the party has faced such humiliating defeat in the state. And all this despite the fact that Haryana is the home state of AAP convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.
The party contested the Lok Sabha elections in the state in alliance with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and had fielded candidates on three seats — Faridabad, Karnal and Ambala.
Party’s main face in Haryana Navin Jaihind, who contested from Faridabad seat, not only lost his security deposit but could also secure only around 1%, or 11,000 of the total votes polled. Finishing fourth, the margin of difference between Jaihind and winning candidate Krishan Pal Gujjar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was of 8 lakh votes. His performance this time was worst than in 2014, when he had contested from Rohtak and secured around 46,000 votes.
Similarly, party’s Karnal candidate Krishan Kumar Aggarwal and Ambala nominee Prithavi Raj, a retired IPS officer, also lost their deposits and were much behind other candidates. While Aggarwal finished fourth in Karnal, Prithavi Raj finished fifth in Ambala. Their victory margin from the winning candidate also ran into several lakhs.
The combined number of votes polled by all the three AAP candidates is less than 50,000.
AAP's alliance partner JJP, which had contested on seven seats, however, got more votes than the AAP. The JJP performed much better in Hisar, Sirsa and Bhiwani-Mahendergarh seats. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the party had contested all the seats and put up a similar show.
In the 2014 elections, the AAP had fielded its candidates on all the 10 seats. However, the party had performed worst of all, as all its candidates lost their security deposits.
Around 71.86% of the total around 1.6 crore electors had exercised their franchise in the 2014 polls, and the AAP had managed to secure only around 4.2% of the votes polled. At that time a prominent face of the party, Yogendra Yadav, had contested from Gurugramconstituency but finished a poor fourth bagging only 79,452 votes. At most of the places, the AAP nominees had finished either fourth or fifth.