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CHANDIGARH: Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) dismal performance in Shahkot assembly byelection on Thursday with the party finishing a distant third is bound to set the alarm bells ringing in the party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Where Doaba was never AAP ’s forte, with the party managing to win only two seats out of the total 25 in the region in the last assembly region, the absence of united efforts by state leadership, indifference of the Delhi leadership and missing grassroot cadres ensured that the party could not even touch a respectably vote count.

The party half-heartedly fought the bypoll with its 62-year-old nominee, Dubai-based NRI Rattan Singh Kakkar Kalan , ending up losing his security deposit with barely 1,900 votes. He also lost from his native Kakkar Kalan village. While Akalis’ vote count dipped only by 2,668, AAP lost 39,110 votes compared to the last election. Party’s leaders who contributed to the Shahkot campaign claimed that there were hardly any booth-level workers of the party in the area.

As AAP’s co-president Balbir Singh put it after the election result, “Every time you cannot win riding on a wave. We will focus on building the organization and micro planning.” Others in the party too feel that the leadership needs to learn lessons from the five back-to-back loses over the past one year, including four corporation polls and Gurdaspur Lok Sabha byelection. Riding on a wave for party’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal, AAP had sprung up a surprise by winning four Lok Sabha seats in 2014. But it was four years back and things are now clearly in a state of disarray.

Many among party’s top state leaders, including Punjab president Bhagwant Mann, were against contesting the byelection in the first place but, claim party sources, Balbir Singh managed to prevail upon the high command to take a plunge to stay relevant in Punjab politics. Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia too skipped the road show in Shahkot at the last minute even though the event was planned to give an impetus to the campaign.

Before the Shahkot bypoll, AAP suffered a jolt when its last election’s candidate Amarjit Singh Third, who had secured 41,010 votes, switched to Akalis. But even before that he allegedly did little to strengthen the party’s presence in the constituency during the past one year and it manifested itself in the missing groundswell.

“Bickering in the state unit is a common knowledge now. At the protest outside the CM’s residence led by Balbir Singh on Wednesday, Khaira and Mann were missing. There are too many power centers in the state even as the foot soldiers are getting disillusioned. The Delhi leadership doesn’t have much time to set the house in order,” said a party leader.

At one stage during the counting for the bypoll, AAP was actually trailing at the fourth place, competing with NOTA. Earlier, during the corporation elections of Jalandhar, Amritsar, and Patiala the party only fielded 149 candidates out of the total of 225 wards in these municipalities and could not get even one councillor elected.

Pack your bags and leave: Amarinder

Advising AAP to pack its bags and leave Punjab, chief minister Amarinder Singh said AAP, whose candidate polled mere 1,900 votes, should not continue to shame itself with such shocking electoral defeats. “The party has completely lost the script and was no longer relevant in the country’s political arena. The Shahkot poll had shown that the theatrics and antics of AAP’s Sukhpal Singh Khaira had failed to convince the people of the party’s seriousness,” he said.

