Need for change drove people to AAP, say supporters

The spike in the cost of power and water, rising inflation and the need for change - these, supporters of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said Sunday, were what caused their party's fantastic debut in the Delhi assembly elections.

"We were very unhappy with the issues of bijli (power), pani (water) and when they came to us with these very issues, we thought why not give them a chance," Anita Bisht, a 35-year-old housewife from Yojna Vihar in east Delhi, told IANS.

During its election campaign, AAP focused a great deal on Delhi's power and water woes and promised to cut electricity rates by half if voted to power.

For Akash Verma, an IIT-Delhi product, who works in a Gurgaon software firm, it was AAP's vision for a different India which drew him to the party.

"AAP managed to convince me that it was different. The other parties were exposed. AAP came onto the scene as a refreshing change," he said.

For 40-year-old Mukesh Ranjan, an auto driver, his faith in the party was proven true.

"We believed from the beginning that the AAP will win. We supported it a lot. Now we feel that people like us will also be heard," he said.

According to chartered accountant Manu Bansal, 28, "This (AAP's debut) was an effort to change politics, so we thought that we should give it a chance".

"They used much less money to win the polls," he said.

Going a step further, Chandrashekhar, a resident of Babarpur in east Delhi, said: "The Congress government was being run with the policies of the East India Company".

He said that given the spectacular performance of AAP in Delhi, within the next decade, there could be a change "sweeping" across the nation.

The election symbol of the AAP was a broom-stick.