In keeping with their commitment to practising 21st century participative democracy as opposed to archaic 19th century representative democracy, AAP decided to send out letters to 25 lakh people eliciting their opinion on whether AAP should form a government in Delhi. However, after facing criticism that that decision itself may have been undemocratic and unrepresentative of the views of people, AAP leadership took a conscientious decision to send out 25,000 letters to ascertain whether they should send out 25 lakh letters. This has not convinced all the sceptics. “What about the decision to send out 25K letters? Was that decision taken democratically or dictatorially? Who decided that?” wondered a disgruntled AAP activist.
AAP however refused to get into the process of recursion and send out 12.5K letters and so on. “Arvind sir’s decision to send out 25K letters was final and roundly endorsed by his sidekick, Dr. Kumar Vishwas who in fact endorses whatever Arvind sir says. There were also rumours that AAP will go to 270 wards to ascertain whether they should serve vada sambar or poori in the party HQ canteen. But Arvind sir prefers poori and there is no question of holding a referendum on the issue,” a member of the political affairs committee clarified. He admitted though that conducting an internal survey by Dr. Yogendra Yadav was also considered but there was 100% unanimity that it was better to avoid that route and send out letters instead.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission is mulling adding another ‘Yes/No’ button to its EVMs with the question: “Do you think AAP should form the government?” along with the normal buttons. Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath said it would incorporate the required level of redundancy into the voting process. “Even if AAP gets a simple majority, they would still want to know whether they ought to form the government and this button will take care of that,” he noted.