NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's party - Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) - will contest on 100 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with an aim to win at least 25 seats.
Delhi's ruling party is hoping to strengthen its position in case a non-BJP government is formed at the Centre after the crucial polls, two senior AAP leaders said on Sunday.
''In the emerging political scenario, winning 25 Lok Sabha seats will ensure the Aam Aadmi Party is in a comfortable position to strike a bargain with other parties after the general election in 2019, news agency PTI quoted a senior AAP leader as saying.
The AAP leader, whose name was not revealed, said that his party has the potential to win at least 100 seats in the upcoming polls.
The party will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that it wins at least 25 seats, particularly in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab, where it has a strong presence and effective organisational setup.
Kejriwal's party will contest Lok Sabha polls in the three states - Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh - where assembly elections are due later this year, besides focussing on Delhi, Haryana and Punjab.
Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat are other states where it plans to contest on selected Lok Sabha seats, the senior AAP leader said.
It may be recalled that Kejriwal's party currently holds four Lok Sabha seats in Punjab.
Punjab sends 13 MPs to Lok Sabha, our party would work to raise its tally as it is an opposition party in Punjab Assembly, another party leader said.
Kejriwal, who is AAP's national convener, had recently visited Haryana, where state party head Navin Jaihind has been able to strengthen the organisation in several constituencies, he said.
"We will work hard to pose a tough challenge to BJP and Congress on all the 10 seats in Haryana," he said.
The two AAP leaders said that the forthcoming elections will be fought on a mix of local and national issues.
In the run-up to the elections, the AAP leadership has upped the ante against the Narendra Modi government, with Kejriwal targeting the Prime Minister on the political controversy around the purchase of 36 Rafale fighters from France.
Kejriwal had on Saturday demanded that PM Modi call a special session of Parliament to discuss the Rafale deal.
The Delhi CM had on Friday asked the BJP-led central government to come clean on the deal in light of former French president Francois Hollande's purported interview to a French language publication.
In the interview, Hollande is quoted as saying that the Indian government proposed Anil Ambani's Reliance Defence as the offset partner for French aerospace giant Dassault Aviation in the Rs 58,000-crore deal.
The government, however, asserted that it did not have any role in the selection of Reliance Defence as a partner for Dassault Aviation.
AAP central leadership, including Kejriwal, have been saying in public meetings that if AAP had won all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in 2014, it would have handled issues such as the ongoing drive to seal illegal commercial establishment in a more effective way.
In 2014, the BJP won all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi.
The next year, AAP was voted to power in the national capital after winning 67 Assembly seats out of the total 70.
