Aam Aadmi Party will contest Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in 2022

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal announced on Tuesday that his 8-year-old party will fight the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections due in 2022, ANI reported.

The 52-year-old leader accused the political parties in Uttar Pradesh of stabbing people in the back. “Politics in the state lacks honesty of intent,” the Delhi Chief Minister said. Kejriwal added that development of the state was held back by dirty politics and corrupt leaders there, PTI reported.

The party, which was formed in 2012 with the promise of ‘clean’ politics and broom symbol, made its electoral debut in the 2013 Delhi Assembly election, where it emerged as the second-largest party, winning 28 of the 70 seats. With no party emerging as the winner, the AAP formed a minority government with the Congress support. The government lasted 49 days.

In the 2015 re-election, AAP won an impressive 67 of the 70 seats in the assembly, the feat it repeated in 2020, winning 62 of the 70 seats.

But, the party’s foray into other states has not been successful so far. Almost all it candidates lost deposits in Goa and Maharashtra, Rajasthan elections. In the 2019 general elections, AAP lost 39 seats of the 40 it had contested from across nine states and UTs.

The party only met with some success in Punjab, where it teamed up with Lok Insaaf Party in 2017 to win 20 seats in a House of 117.