AAP: From movement to fastest-growing political party
AAP- Aam Aadmi Party, a party which is now facing allegations of scam in the Delhi Excise policy, once came into existence with a movement fighting against corruption.
AAP is a party which was born out of the famous India Against Corruption (IAC) movement in 2012.
The Jan Lokpal movement
In 2011, activist Anna Hazare launched a nation wide campaign to implent the Jan Lokpal Bill, which marks as one of the largest civil movements taken up ever in the Indian political history.
Jan Lokpal Bill was a campaign against the high profile corruption scams which came to the light before the public during 2011-12 under the Congress led-UPA government
If we trace back to 2011-12, India’s air was then filled with the issues of corruption such as Coal Scam, Commonwealth Games Scam, Adarsh Housing Society Scam and many more. The poeple of the nation were dwindling with the fact that whether there existed such corruptions, the charges of which were laid against the UPA government in power.
Jan Lokpal Bill, was a legislation bill which was demanded to be implied to help in bringing down the fraudulent system in the adminstration of the government. The bill seeked a Jan Lokpal, an independent investigative body to deter corruption.
With the passage of time the fight for this campaign became a mass movement, with lakhs of individuals joining with this movement from across the nation, coming out of small towns, villages, municipalities united.
The movement which was started by Anna Hazare was backed by incumbent Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Advocate Prashant Bhushan(the son offormer Union Minister Shanti Bhushan, who back in 1970-80’s tried getting this bill passed in the Parliament but failed) and other activists.
AAP’s formation
Later, Arvind Kejriwal joined by Prashant Bhusan, Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas, Manish Sisodia and other activists who were part of the IAC movement came to a conclusion that the only way to end corruption is to enter into politics, enter into the system and work from inside to eradicate the corruption.
This was a moment when Kejriwal embraced his political career debut through the doors of IAC movement.
On 02 October, 2012, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the Aam Aadmi party was formed, which the AAP terms as an watershed moment in Indian political history and on 26 November, 2012 it officially came into existence.
AAP’s formation was termed as a new age political startup which eventually marketed itself as an alternate choice to the grand old parties such as BJP, Congress and other parties that were in existence since a long time.
AAP was the only party ever in India which was formed without any set of ideological mindset back then.
In an usual account, for entering into Indian politics battlefield, one needs to have a strong political background or must be under the shadow of big gun politicians, Kejriwal had neither of them in his account, a former bureacrat, about whom people never imagined of entering into politics.
The Aam Aadmi Party claims that during its formation and in its initial days it pionnered on crowd sourced model of electoral fundraising with small amount of donations from the people directly.
The party named itself as the Aam Aadmi and it promoted itself as a party of the Aam Aadmi and for the Aam Aadmi(a party of the common man, and of the common man), the message went out directly to the hearts of the people especially the common man.
AAP made a debut in the elections with the Delhi assembly elections in 2013 where for the first time and in just over a year of its formation, AAP with the support of Congress came into the power, which lasted just a few months.
Aam Aadmi Party is considered as country’s fastest growing political party which recently got the tag of National party.
