Arvind Kejriwal’s one wish came true. His Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has now become a national party.
There would hardly be any other leader in this country, who would have started trying to make the party national as soon as it was formed.
Kejriwal formed the party in 2011 and contested elections across the country in 2014. He had fielded candidates for more than 125 seats and himself went to Varanasi to contest against Narendra Modi.
The setback he faced in that election slowed down his pace a bit. But then his ambitions were boosted by the thumping majority he got in the 2015 Delhi Assembly election?
They started contesting elections in every state so that you get the status of a national party as soon as possible.
They fulfilled the criteria of being a national party when they secured around 13 per cent votes in the Gujarat assembly elections late last year.
They have governments in Delhi and Punjab and in Goa they got more than seven per cent votes.
One of the many criteria to be a national party is to get six per cent or more votes in four states.
So, as soon as AAP got 13 per cent votes in Gujarat, staked claim before the Election Commission.
When the Election Commission delayed taking a decision, his party appealed to the Karnataka High Court to ask the Election Commission to take a quick decision.
The High Court had given the commission a deadline of 13 April and three days before that, the commission announced the status of national party to the Aam Aadmi Party on 10 April.
Also, the national party status of Sharad Pawar’s NCP, Mamta Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and CPI has been abolished.
Now the question is what will change after AAP becomes a national party and Trinamool Congress, NCP and CPI cease to be national parties?
Will the Aam Aadmi Party become a bigger party than these three? Trinamool has more than 215 MLAs and more than 30 MPs in both houses of parliament.
This is much more than the number of MLAs and MPs of AAP. So, AAP becoming a national party is just a technical matter, which will give it one more office space in the capital Delhi and broom election symbol across the country.
But the difficulty is that once the national party is formed, Kejriwal will start considering himself as an alternative to both BJP and Congress and may do such politics, which can ultimately harm the common strategy of the opposition to fight against BJP.
