AAP unwilling to make election predictions

The Aam Aadmi Party is in no mood to go public with its poll survey for the impending Assembly elections in Delhi, despite opinion polls showing that the party is on a slippery ground.

BJP in its own survey gave itself 43-48 seats in the 70-member House. The survey predicts only 15-19 seats for AAP and 8-11 for Congress.

“We were a young party then. News channels were saying that we are nowhere,” senior AAP leader Yogendra Yadav said, while adding the decision to go public with its internal survey in the 2013 Assembly elections was taken to counter the mounting pressure from the ‘opposing forces’.

“It is an internal survey. There is no point making it public,” Yadav said. In the last Assembly elections, AAP had hired the New Delhi-based Cicero Associates and Consultants Private Limited which along with the well-known psephologist Yadav carried out the survey.

Not far from its prediction, AAP had managed a sensational electoral debut in the last Assembly polls winning as many as 28 seats. BJP had won 32 seats with ally SAD, while Congress tally was restricted to only eight seats. AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has been claiming that his party will win 45 seats in the forthcoming polls.
The party said it will make an appeal for donation. “In 2013, we wanted Rs 20 crore to contest election. But considering inflation and other factors, this time, it could be more,” said Yadav.

Sources in the party said AAP is planning to raise as much as Rs 30 crore for the impending Assembly polls to counter BJP’s ‘massive’ poll spending.