Mayank Gandhi; Preeti Sharma Menon Mayank Gandhi; Preeti Sharma Menon

From thousands of volunteers then to a handful few now, and from nearly 800 office bearers in its heyday to none today, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) presence in Maharashtra has plummeted steadily, ironically due to the same brand of politics that it had once vowed to fight.

The party, born after a nationwide anti-corruption wave, had projected itself as a credible alternative to mainstream political outfits by promising transparency and greater public say in governance. However, it has now been reduced to less than a fence player in Maharashtra due to internal bickering and unilateral decisions from the central leadership that didn’t go down well with several local leaders.

The ouster of Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan further drove a wedge among the party’s Maharashtra leadership, and the decision to stay out of Maharashtra elections dampened many volunteers, AAP insiders say. Disillusioned AAP leaders in Maharashtra also complain about a sense of autocracy in the party’s functioning with Arvind Kejriwal at the helm and the Delhi team dictating decisions.

“We believe in the original ideology of the party. We don’t want AAP to be identified by just Kejriwal, or else there would be no difference between outfits like the BJP with Narendra Modi as its face and the Congress, which is governed by the Gandhi family,” said an AAP leader from Mumbai who did not wish to be named.

Moreover, AAP’s move to appoint six nodal persons to set its beleaguered Maharashtra unit in order has further irked the local leaders, with three of the six ‘prabharis’ being Delhi legislators.

“Why do people from Delhi need to be brought in to increase the party’s presence in Maharashtra? This is just another example of how the party is turning out to be no different from any other political party,” said an AAP leader, who had once contested the Lok Sabha elections for the party, but now claims to be a “very passive member” of the organisation.

Mayank Gandhi, who has been in the AAP since its inception, said, “The Maharashtra unit was perhaps AAP’s best team in terms of activities and cohesiveness. The party’s Mission Vistaar was the best thing that could happen. There was some unrest, but things changed when the Delhi leadership disbanded the Maharashtra unit suddenly.”

Gandhi, who had in the past been critical of the way Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were ousted, quit the AAP’s national executive about a month after the dissolution of the Maharashtra unit, saying that the present condition of its politics was unpalatable and he was losing interest.

AAP had launched Mission Vistaar to rope in more volunteers after its rout in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. In Maharashtra, it had managed to poll only 2.2 percent of the votes. Soon after the elections, the party appointed Subhash Ware as state convenor after Anjali Damania decided to step down from the post.

Senior party leaders attributed the decision to negative feedback gathered by Mission Vistaar observers on the then leadership and the need to have a leader with a mass base. Apart from Damania, Preeti Sharma Menon had also decided to step down from party posts citing personal reasons.

A senior AAP member said, “In the entire reshuffle, some people were displaced. Their positions changed and it didn’t go down well with them. They spew venom about the Maharashtra unit to the central leadership, and eventually the entire Maharashtra executive was scrapped. This is the exact kind of politics that we wanted to fight against in the first place. It was pure internal politics of sycophancy; it changed us.”

However, Ware, who has been devoting most of his time to social work ever since AAP pulled the plug on its Maharashtra unit, said that he hasn’t lost faith in the party yet.

“In certain situations, when things don’t go as planned, it is important to take a backseat and remain silent than muddle the situation further and cause any more harm to the party. I will wait for things to get back to normal,” he said.

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