This Article is From Apr 22, 2017

All 'Good' People Should Join Hands To Take On BJP: Arvind Kejriwal

All 'Good' People Should Join Hands To Take On BJP: Arvind Kejriwal

Arvind Kejriwal admitted to have made "mistakes" in Punjab, where AAP was tipped to do well but lost.

New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Friday joined the chorus for an alliance against the BJP, saying all the "good" people should join hands to take on the saffron party.

He also admitted to have made "mistakes" in Punjab, where the AAP was tipped to do well but lost badly to the Congress.

He insisted that its defeat was due to the electronic voting machines (EVMs), which he alleged were tampered with.

"If there is a need for such an alliance in the country, all the good people should come forward (to join hands)," the Delhi Chief Minister told PTI.

He said he "liked" all of them. His remarks came in the back drop of his recent meeting with Kerala counterpart, Pinarayi Vijayan.

Mr Kejriwal had called on Mr Vijayan at the Kerala House here and discussed "a range of issues".

The AAP chief had in the past shared dais with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

He said that the results in the recent polls in Goa were "not surprising" but in Punjab it was not as per the party's expectation.

"The results of Goa Assembly polls were not surprising for me, but in Punjab the results were not what we had expected. The energy in Punjab was a very high. I had seen that.

"We have done mistakes. We might have committed 100 mistakes and we will rectify them as well at the party level. But we were not defeated because of our mistakes but the EVMs," he said.

Mr Kejriwal had been raking up the issue of alleged tampering of the EVMs, despite the Election Commission's assertion that the machines are robust and tamper-proof.

He had raised the issue of faulty EVMs used during the bypoll in Rajasthan's Dholpur.

The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) plea for use of the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) voting machines in the April 23 municipal polls.

Justice AK Pathak said an order for use of VVPAT-enabled Generation 2 or Generation 3 electronic voting machines cannot be issued at the 11th hour as it would amount to stalling the election process.
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