Following its dismal performance in the Haryana Assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) announced that it will soon hold a meeting to review its organizational structure and shift its focus to the upcoming municipal elections in the state.

Anurag Dhanda, AAP’s Haryana vice-president, attributed the party’s poor showing to the absence of its national convener, Arvind Kejriwal, who was in jail due to the Delhi excise policy case during the campaign. However, an analysis of the 11 constituencies where Kejriwal did campaign after his release shows that while AAP failed to win any of those seats, it secured more votes than the margin of victory in five of them, negatively impacting the Congress’s chances.

In the Haryana elections, the incumbent BJP won a third consecutive term, securing 48 out of 90 seats, while the Congress won 37.

Although both AAP and Congress are part of the INDIA alliance at the national level, they did not reach a seat-sharing arrangement for the Haryana Assembly elections.

Kejriwal, who was released from jail on September 13, started campaigning in Haryana on September 20. Dhanda stated that the party would soon reorganize its state unit to prepare for municipal elections, saying, “The Assembly election was a two-sided contest, and people wanted to replace the BJP. However, Congress’s arrogance led to its failure to consolidate non-Jat votes. We couldn’t perform well because Kejriwal was behind bars and only got bail after the final day of nomination.”

Despite contesting 89 of the 90 seats, AAP failed to win a single seat, garnering just 1.79% of the vote share. Dhanda, who ran in the Kalayat seat and finished far behind the Congress candidate, argued that if AAP had more time, it could have performed better, as it did in Gujarat, where it won five seats and 12.92% of the vote share in the 2022 Assembly elections.

In the 11 Haryana constituencies where Kejriwal campaigned, AAP’s best results were third-place finishes in Rewari, Bhiwani, and Jagadhri. It placed fourth in one seat, fifth in five seats, and seventh and eighth in one seat each.