Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal attended a Vipassana session towards the end of the polling day.
“He is a very peaceful person,” party spokesperson Yogendra Yadav said, explaining Kejriwal’s absence in a press conference after polling hours ended at 5 pm. “He had been working very hard,” Yadav said of Kejriwal, who was performing yoga then.
Kejriwal is expected to address the media on Sunday, when election results will be out, Yadav added.
The party hailed voluntary participation for their impressive debut, irrespective of the results. A party member said they have turned their very first election into a “quest for an alternative kind of politics”.
The party thanked the Election Commission for their non-partisan attitude.
However, Aam Aadmi Party said they received complaints about large scale deletion of genuine voters, non-functioning electronic voting machines and partisan behaviour of polling staff at several constituencies.
“These complaints were especially serious from New Delhi constituency,” Yadav said. Kejriwal contested against Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit from this area.
“Some of our polling agents were not allowed to go inside the polling station,” he said.
He said the party is confident that the Election Commission will take the complaints seriously.
Yadav credited the party for many firsts – crowd sourcing clean money, constituency level manifestos and transparent method of candidate selection.
“Our ground reports are encouraging and people are supporting our politics of change,” Yadav said.
On how many seats the party may win, the psephologist-turned-politician said, “The exit polls will be out soon. I left the business of prediction a year ago. And that is also a reason why I have joined politics.”
“We are expecting a record voter turnout. Considering that 18 to 19 per cent of the names were missing from the list, anything more than 65 per cent is huge,” Yadav said, thanking the people of Delhi for coming out in large numbers.
