A day after the AAP suffered a drubbing in the Rajouri Garden assembly seat bypoll in Delhi, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday said the defeat will not impact his party's prospects in the April 23 civic elections.
In an interview with NDTV, Kejriwal said the Aam Aadmi Party lost the bypoll because the people in the constituency were angry after party MLA Jarnail Singh resigned in the middle of his term to contest the February 4 Punjab assembly elections.
"I was getting a feedback that the constituency's people were angry that Jarnail Singh left to contest Punjab assembly elections. People of Rajouri Garden did not like that Jarnail Singh left them midway. We failed to convince the voters," Kejriwal said.
Kejriwal said he is hopeful of winning the elections to the 272 wards of the three municipal corporations in Delhi and "it will be wrong to see this (bypoll result) as a trailer for municipal elections".
"The Delhi loss was just an anger against one candidate, nothing more," The AAP national convenor said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's candidate won the seat in the bypoll, the Congress came second, while the AAP candidate came a distant third.
Kejriwal also questioned the work done by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the three municipal areas in the last 10 year.
"I ask people -- (tell) one good thing the BJP has done in the municipal bodies in the last 10 years."
"For 10 years, the BJP has been in charge of the MCDs; you can see how much filth there is on the streets of Delhi. All the dengue, malaria... and this is despite all the money they have. They are so short of cash that they can't pay their employees. The MCDs under BJP rule did nothing. There is huge corruption in the MCDs," Kejriwal said.
The Chief Minister pointed to the work done by the AAP government in Delhi and said that the April 23 civic polls will be a referendum on their "good work" in the national capital.
"There is a lot of positivity in Delhi about the work we have done, especially in education, health and water availability," the AAP leader said.
"The AAP has worked a lot in the last two years -- we halved electricity rates, gave free water. We have shut down system of donations in colleges; we have taken down the construction mafia, we have hit the drugs mafia. (Deputy Chief Minister) Manish (Sisodia) has not allowed fee hike in any schools built on public land. He has opened 8,000 classes, and opened about 200 new schools," he said.
Kejriwal said: "We have five years (in power); we are (now) working on closed-circuit television and Wi-Fi."
--IANS
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