The Aam Aadmi Party is going to cut the tickets of about 80 percent of its outgoing councillors. This means only 20 percent of the sitting councillors of the MCD will be able to get a ticket to contest the upcoming civic polls.

As the date of the election is drawing closer, in the same way the internal tussle in the Aam Aadmi Party over ticket distribution is growing. Most of the party MLAs do not want the old councillors to be given party tickets again.

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Sources associated with the AAP said that due to the reduction of 250 wards from 272, the mathematics of most of the outgoing councillors of the party has gone awry. The municipal elections have become a prestige issue for the party leadership.

The AAP leadership feels that if the party does not come to power in the municipal corporation in the 2022 elections, it will have to wait for another five years. To avoid the situation, such candidates are going to be selected by the party who are financially capable and can spend a lot on the elections.

Sources also say that the AAP leadership wants local workers and leaders to be fielded from most of the wards so that there won’t be any resentment from the workers against leadership. If only the old councillors are repeated from new wards, the possibility is that the resentment among the workers waiting for their turn to be candidates from their respective wards will grow.

This is the reason the party wants to retry only strong outgoing councillors who are free from ward jumping wherever there is no possibility of any fight. The increased heat of the election is also visible among the AAP MLAs and the outgoing councilors where the claim for the ticket of the outgoing councillors is considered strong. In such areas, the Opposition has been started by other leaders of the party itself. This was seen on Monday at the office of the Aam Aadmi Party. There was a protest here against the re-election of an outgoing councillor of the party.

Sources say that the AAP MLA of the area is behind this protest. It remains to be seen how the AAP leadership is able to stop the instigators of such protests.