Maha assembly polls: AAP to contest all 36 Mumbai seats, says party leader

The Aam Aadmi Party will contest the Maharashtra assembly polls and field candidates on all 36 seats in Mumbai, its leader Preeti Sharma Menon said on Monday.

Addressing a press conference here, she also said the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP was part of the opposition INDIA bloc, adding "the alliance was for the Lok Sabha polls and will continue to be together at the national level". "The AAP will contest all 36 seats in Mumbai.

In the rest of Maharashtra, our colleagues and volunteers are galvanised and preparations are on in full swing," Menon said. AAP is a national party which under the visionary leadership of Kejriwal had emerged from a people's movement and is now in power in Delhi and Punjab, while it has MLAs in Goa and Gujarat as well as MPs, she asserted.

In just 10 years, the AAP has demonstrated the "Delhi model" of development, under which quality education, healthcare, water and electricity is provided free to all and that too without corruption and without debt, she said. "If Delhi and Punjab can deliver, it is due to Aam Aadmi Party's clean politics and new political culture.

The present BJP-Shinde Sena led government has zero political will for public welfare and is instead busy in wholesale corruption as they are convinced they aren't returning to power," she claimed. The BJP is an anti-Maharashtra and anti-Mumbai party, while the Eknath Shinde government has no time for public welfare and is busy looting the exchequer, she alleged.

"Not only has the Shinde government committed a fraud on the Constitution, but it has also failed on all fronts. Unemployment and inflation have broken the back of the aam aadmi (common citizens). Agrarian distress and related farmer suicides continue unabated. Once the most industrialized state in India, Maharashtra is no longer the leader in terms of GDP. Tax payer money is being used as bank guarantees for private cooperatives," she claimed.

Socially disadvantaged groups and the marginalized sections of society are increasingly being subjected to violence and discrimination, and the state government is also not serious on the issue of Maratha reservation despite an agitation by activist Manoj Jarange, she said.

"There is no public representation in any of the 27 municipal corporations of Maharashtra, including BMC in Mumbai. Mumbai's infrastructure is crumbling. Housing remain an unresolved issue. Slums are becoming increasingly unliveable. The builder and contractor mafias have taken over the city," she claimed. Attacking the BJP, she said, "The BJP cannot stand Mumbai's pre-eminence as India's largest and most cosmopolitan city, which is also the country's financial capital. Mumbai is the engine for India's economic growth. There is a deliberate attempt to kill Mumbai by the BJP through an exodus of projects meant for Mumbai to Gujarat."

Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis have ensured that Maharashtra's interest is subservient to that of Gujarat, she alleged. Maharashtra and its people deserve better and AAP is not just the alternative but is the solution, the party's working president Ruben Mascarenhas said.