The Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which witnessed a landslide victory in the Delhi Assembly elections, winning 62 of the 70 seats, is set to contest the upcoming Bihar elections, The Times of India has reported.

AAP’s Bihar unit chief Shatrughan Sahu has said the party has already begun its mass-connect initiatives in the state, and that it will fight the elections on the same development agenda, akin to what they did in Delhi.

“We have already started our ‘Jan Samvad Yatra’ and covered 26 districts in Bihar so far. We have been directed by the senior party leadership to make necessary preparations to make a strong mark in the upcoming Bihar elections,” Sahu told the newspaper.

This will be the first time that the Delhi-based regional party will be contesting the assembly elections in Bihar. Previously, AAP had fielded 39 candidates from Bihar in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, but all of them had lost. The party had fielded three candidates during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Kishanganj, Bhagalpur and Sitamarhi, but they too met with the same fate.

Sahu said that it will be different this time around. He said that AAP was “much stronger now” and the “governance agenda of Kejriwal” is being appreciated and followed elsewhere in the country.

“We get good response from the people when we visit the state hinterlands, which are still devoid of basic amenities,” AAP’s Bihar unit chief told the newspaper.

Sahu said that the party will be questioning Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar’s work on the basic issues like education, health and water in the state. “Nitish Kumar questioned the Kejriwal government’s work on health, education and roads in Delhi. We will ask the same questions to Nitish here (in Bihar),” Sahu said.

Sahu asserted that AAP will emerge as the most “reliable alternative” in Bihar just as it did in Delhi, as people are neither happy with the Lalu Prasad-led RJD, nor with the JD(U)-BJP government in the state.