| Description | Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, English: Common Man's Party) is an Indian political party, formally launched on 26 November 2012, and is currently the ruling party of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. It came into existence following differences between the activists Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare regarding whether or not to politicise the popular India Against Corruption movement that had been demanding a Jan Lokpal Bill since 2011. Hazare preferred that the movement should remain politically unaligned while Kejriwal felt the failure of the agitation route necessitated a direct political involvement.
The party made its electoral debut in the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly election, where it emerged as the second-largest party, winning 28 of the 70 seats. With no party obtaining an overall majority, the AAP formed a minority government with conditional support from the Indian National Congress. A significant part of its agenda was to quickly introduce the Jan Lokpal bill in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. When it became clear after the election that the other major parties would not support this bill, the AAP government resigned. It had been in power for 49 days.
In the 2015 Delhi Legislative Assembly election, AAP won 67 of the 70 seats in the assembly. Among two national political parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party won 3 seats, while the Indian National Congress did not win any. |
