With the Punjab win, the party claims to have won its national stripes; talks in numbers for forthcoming Mumbai civic polls
Preeti Sharma Menon at the AAP victory rally in Mumbai
Mightily chuffed with the recent Punjab Assembly polls win, AAP Mumbai Prabhari Preeti Sharma Menon talks about proving critics wrong, the charge of being a ‘freebie’ party and dismisses ‘AAP-rehensions’ about the Mumbai civic polls. An interview:
Are you witnessing a shift in the way people perceive the party post-Punjab?
I think at first there was no resonance or relevance in pockets of the country. Today, that is not so. Agree or disagree with our policies, we are relevant everywhere. We had a recent victory rally in Mumbai where auto driver to the luxury car owner acknowledged us. The police treated us differently. Like a national party. The way the permissions were granted, the number of police cars accompanying us.
You talk about the Delhi model and applying it to Punjab, but Punjab is different from Delhi...
Absolutely. You cannot compare the two. Punjab is very complex. It is a mix of industrial and agricultural society. We are talking about a Delhi model, where we did not let corruption steal from people and applying the same formula to Punjab. The model is about making the economy profitable and then benefitting the people.
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The AAP gives free electricity to people and gave money to women in Punjab, somebody somewhere is sacrificing for this to happen, and one day, all this will stop working for the AAP...
When you give a person some basic funds, then they have a small sum which is disposable. They can spend that disposable income and that is a boost to the economy. This money is available when there is a corruption-free society and funds can be put to these uses. Did we not see people who were on furlough during the pandemic?
The pro-Khalistan, pro-separatist stain on AAP is still present. How is the party going to erase this?
The common man has not bought into the evil ploy. We saw the Congress attacking AAP on this plank. Earlier, it was the BJP. The people of India will not support any separatist movement and the fact that we were voted in in Punjab proves they do not believe this, nor are they fools to fall for these tactics. So, there is no ‘stain’ to erase.
The AAP has bashed every political party with its protests. Today, parties are allying with sworn enemies. AAP may have to come together with a party it trashed earlier, to form a government
I cannot predict the future. All I can say today is that AAP believes in fighting alone everywhere. Having said that, we may have to come together, I do not know. However, if that rids the nation of the corrupt and communal BJP, then, that is a necessary alliance, that is my broader perspective.
The Mumbai civic elections are coming up. You have targeted the BMC recently on corruption and lagging behind on hygiene and transparency...
There has not been any opposition in the BMC, that has been a perennial problem. The Standing Committee passes 300 proposals at a time, it is seen that relatives of all political parties ‘benefit’. A Mumbai flyover costs Rs 234 crore. In Delhi, a flyover is made in Rs 90 crore. Why the difference? I am confident that we will get at least 8 lakh votes and have a sizeable number of corporators, we are looking at 30, in these civic elections.
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