Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal will depart for a 10-day Vipassana meditation camp in Punjab on Tuesday. This comes close to a month after the party’s defeat in the Delhi assembly elections.
AAP sources have confirmed that Kejriwal will be traveling to Hoshiarpur to participate in the meditation course between March 5 and March 15. This is not his first Vipassana session; he had previously undergone a 10-day course at the Dhamma Dhaja Vipassana Centre in December 2023, when he was also in legal trouble, including a summons from the Enforcement Directorate in relation to a money laundering investigation into the excise policy.
With the party’s defeat of the New Delhi seat in the Feb 5 Assembly election, Kejriwal has largely limited his public appearances and has worked on the functioning of the party instead. AAP, which held Delhi from 2015 until 2024 with huge mandates, was able to win just 22 of 70 Assembly seats in the last election. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) broke AAP’s monopoly to a large extent, winning 48 seats, and some of AAP’s top leaders, including Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain, lost the election.
In the wake of the election loss, AAP’s Delhi unit is conducting organizational meetings, with convener Gopal Rai emphasizing that only those leaders who performed well in the elections will be assigned new tasks.
Kejriwal’s pullout in Punjab is significant for one additional reason, as Congress is claiming that several AAP MLAs are considering switching sides. The AAP has flatly denied these rumors, including gossip on whether Bhagwant Mann as the state chief minister would be replaced.
