“The day AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) is voted to power, the people of Gujarat will start receiving free electricity,” Delhi Chief Minister, and AAP national convener, Arvind Kejriwal said during a “Bijli Jansamwad” held on Monday at the town hall here. Kejriwal was using his party’s Delhi and Punjab “models” of “free and round-the-clock” electricity as an election pitch for the upcoming state Assembly polls.
“No one has been able to give free and 24-hour electricity in the whole world. This is a magic that only I have, and no one else knows how to do it,” Kejriwal claimed. He said the party's “clean consciousness and honesty” were the factors behind this “magic”.
Saying he would visit the state again next Sunday, the Delhi CM claimed he would “bring the solution to free electricity as we need to build Gujarat as Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel dreamt of.”
This was Kejriwal's fifth visit in the past five months. Just like Prime Minister Narendra Modi—who has been making regular monthly visits to his home after BJP’s Uttar Pradesh victory—the AAP convener has increased his campaigning in poll-bound Gujarat, after the party came to power in Punjab.
Kejriwal said his experience has revealed that “70 per cent to 80 per cent electricity bills are inflated.” “I am a literate man...my degree is not fake...I am an engineer and have worked with the Income Tax department. I know laws as well. I have done my calculation and I know that supplying free electricity to the people is possible without burdening them with any additional taxes," Kejriwal said.
“About 73 per cent power users in Delhi get free electricity and about 80 per cent in Punjab. We are working on 24-hour electricity supply in Punjab which should be done in the next couple of years,” he said.
Without naming anyone, Kejriwal pointed fingers saying that a “big leader of Gujarat is saying that the state doesn't need free power. First, he should give up free power. These leaders are scared because they think that there won't be any money left to loot.”
Raising the issue of farmers getting power supply at night for irrigation, the Delhi CM said: “The ministers should also receive electricity only at night, and work at the secretariat during the night.”
AAP has been strategically pitching itself as an “alternative” to the BJP, and even Congress. The party has been steadily organising itself, while campaigning for extending "free and better government schools and free electricity" in urban and rural areas, particularly targeting the farmers.
The party recently appointed 7,500 new office bearers. On Sunday, 6,000 of them took oath in the presence of Kejriwal.
For the past one month, the party has been campaigning across the state with its ‘Muft Bijli Andolan (Free Electricity Movement)’ as a poll-pitch ahead of the Assembly elections in December this year.