NEW DELHI (TIP): A day after he announced that his new Aam Aadmi Party will contest nearly 350 of the Lok Sabha’s 543 seats, Arvind Kejriwal listed his choice for “India‘s Most Corrupt” and vowed to put up strong candidates against them.
Union ministers like Kapil Sibal, Kamal Nath and Farooq Abdullah were among his nominees; so was Nitin Gadkari, BS Yeddyurappa and Anant Kumar of the BJP and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi who is helming his party’s campaign for the national election due by May. “Don’t let a single corrupt politician enter Parliament,” he told party workers.
Think of that election as a revolution to cleanse parliament, Mr Kejriwal urged party workers in Delhi. He has declared that his party will prioritize defeating about 160 candidates who have criminal records. Positioning his party as the putative antidote to a deeply-corrupt system has served the former tax inspector well.
A month ago, he took over as the chief minister of Delhi after the Aam Aadmi Party or AAP emerged as a breakout hit in the first election it contested. After the hyper-change it escorted, national interest in the AAP has spiked. Opinion polls project about 12 seats for the AAP, but its impact is visible in the national campaign, with the two major parties, the Congress and the opposition BJP, aping its anti-elite, anti-corruption language.