The upcoming municipal elections are seen as AAP's last chance to prove it is still politically relevant.
Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party, which held west Delhi's Rajouri Garden assembly constituency, suffered a loss, placing them a faraway number three in by-elections held to the state on Sunday. The upcoming municipal elections are seen as the party's last chance to prove it is still politically relevant, after its poor performance in the Punjab and Goa elections.
Here are the highlights from Party Chief Arvind Kejriwal's interview to NDTV:- There is a lot of positivity in Delhi about the work that the state government has done, especially in education, health and water
- People of Rajouri Garden did not like that Jarnail Singh "left them" midway
- We failed to make convince the voters
- It will be wrong to see this as a trailer for MCD elections
- The Delhi loss was just an anger against one candidate, nothing more
- For 10 years BJP has been in charge of MCD, you can see how much filth there is on the streets of Delhi; all the dengue, malaria - you can see for yourself. And this is despite all the money they have...clearly it's a loss because of corruption
- AAP has worked a lot in the last two years, halved electricity rates, given free water
- I am going to see now what kind of EVMs they are going to use...they are bringing back EVMs from junkyards; the Uttar Pradesh Election Commission itself has said they won't accept EVMs older than 2006
- I am an engineer from IIT...I can tell you 10 ways how EVMs can be tampered
- The chips which are made by two different companies, can be manipulated at source; a bug or a Trojan Horse can be inserted in the chips at the point of origin
- It is true if we win, it is a referendum on the government and our loss would raise questions on EVMs (in response to a question)
- If the EVMs are not fixed, our democracy can't be saved
- It seems the Election Commission is doing it intentionally, why are they brushing the allegations under the carpet?
- The Election Commission is pulling out all stops to help the BJP win
- A candidate from Pune says he got zero votes even though he voted for himself
- If they would have made the Akali's win, it would have raised far graver questions; that's why they helped the Congress win
- We will discuss what we did wrong, within the party
- We have shut down the system of donations in colleges, we have taken down the construction mafia, we have hit the drugs mafia; Of course they will unite against us
- I ask the people, one good thing the BJP has done as in charge of the MCD in the last 10 years; they are so short of cash that they can't pay their employees.
- On 97 crore allegations: At least the LG admits we did not spend 526 crore on ads. And if you want the money back from us, you have to ask it back from other parties as well What about other Chief Ministers? What about the Prime Minister? He is there on every ad..Also, all states advertise in other states - are they wrong too?
- Ram Jethmalani has been representing me for 1.5 years, why did they raise it now?
- Also, the case was against me as Chief Minister because I ordered probe on DDCA as CM
- The people have to decide whether we are unraveling or our sheen is coming off
- But I dare you to compare our work in 2 years to that of Shiv Raj Singh Chauhan in 15 years
- Manish Sisodia opened 8000 schools in this time. SRSC must have opened about 200
- We have five years, we are working on CCTV, WiFi.