(Somu Kumar is an IT Project Manager who lives in Washington DC Metro.)
Aam Aadmi Party volunteers and supporters in USA were very excited and happy on Sunday to finally interact with the person they been wishing to meet for many years.
AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal was in New York City on a whirlwind one-day trip and held meetings with many supporter groups to energize them for the upcoming Delhi election.
Then came the meet-and-greet session with AAP volunteers and supporters in USA. A strong crowd of more than 300 people gathered in a hall in the Sheraton Hotel. Even with the short notice regarding Kejriwal's visit, hundreds of volunteers poured in to meet him, with many travelling several hundred miles by car and others taking last-minute flights.
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Similarly, many supporters drove from neighbouring cities in New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia and DC while others flew as far as from Bay Area, LA, Chicago and Atlanta.
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Akshay Kumar Anugu, post-doctoral researcher and AAP volunteer who was part of the organizing team of Kejriwal's visit said, "I am overwhelmed by the response of AAP supporters. We barely had four days to plan and pull off the event, yet we got several hundred people coming from all over US & Canada. If we had a few more weeks, I am sure we would have had thousands more."
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Kejriwal was introduced by Professor Alfred Stepan, who called the Aam Aadmi Party a very interesting political case study. Kejriwal started his speech with a tribute to Dr Ambedkar who studied at Columbia; he spoke for 40 minutes on the need and challenges of clean politics and highlighted the party's recent 'Delhi Dialogue' initiative which focuses on drafting good public policies for Delhi. He announced that Education and Health are the top policy priorities of the party.
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The day ended with Arvind Kejriwal meeting with a small group of friends and supporters organized by some of his IIT Kharagpur classmates. He flew out of New York at 10 am capping his barely 24-hour visit to 'The Big Apple'.
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