LUCKNOW: Having earlier declared its plans to contest next year’s panchayat elections in UP, Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday announced that it would be contesting the 2022 UP assembly elections as well.
After Punjab, Haryana and Goa, UP will be the fourth state other than Delhi, AAP’s base, where the party is taking a plunge into serious electoral politics.
Promising to bring the Delhi model of development to UP, Kejriwal said that all governments in the state had failed to bring about development, clear in the fact that even now, people needing medical attention or wanting to send their children to good colleges, looked towards Delhi.
“Why do people of UP travel to Delhi for every major and minor facility? If a family living in Kanpur has to send their child to a good college, they have to send him/her to Delhi. If a person living in Gorakhpur has to get good medical treatment for his/her parents, they have to come to Delhi. Why? Can’t the biggest state in the country not turn into the most developed state in the country?” Kejriwal said, saying that like Delhi, every colony in UP could have a mohalla clinic, 24-hour power supply, public school education at par with private schools.
He added that development of UP was held back because of “dirty politics” and people from UP had been approaching him, asking for a Delhi-like government which was honest and had intent.
AAP MP and UP convenor Sanjay Singh said that the party had already started work on ground in UP and in the past five months, no other political party had been seen taking up people’s issues other than AAP. The party has appointed two senior Dalit members, minister Rajendra Pak Gautam and former minister and MLA Rakhi Bidlan, to oversee the election work.