Chandigarh: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will release its first list of candidates for the 2027 assembly elections in Punjab on Saturday.
Announcing this, chief minister Bhagwant Mann said he would release the first list of candidates after a meeting of the party’s political affairs committee. “We have been declaring our candidates ahead of other parties in the past. We will follow the practice this time as well,” he told the media in New Delhi after a meeting with AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab affairs in-charge Manish Sisodia. The meeting was held at Kejriwal’s residence.
The chief minister said the names of candidates were discussed on the basis of “people surveys” and feedback on the performance of MLAs. “We will give tickets to leaders who are liked by people,” he said, refusing to specify the number of candidates in the first list.
Punjab AAP president Aman Arora and cabinet minister Harpal Singh Cheema joined the meeting via video-conference. The 11-member PAC, the party’s highest decision-making body, comprises Kejriwal, Atishi, Sisodia, Mann, Durgesh Pathak, Cheema, Gopal Rai, ND Gupta, Satyendar Jain, PK Gupta and Sanjay Singh.
Mann, who was earlier a special invitee, and Cheema were inducted as members in September 2026 in view of the state polls. Aman Arora is now a special invitee.
Mann said that the party leadership had decided to reach out to people through a positive campaign, focusing on electricity, water, schools, hospitals, roads, infrastructure and other development-related issues. “We will follow positive politics. All this was discussed in the meeting. We had a good discussion,” he said.
Asked to comment on the possibility of an alliance between the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state, the CM said, “If you add zero to zero, it will remain zero. Both parties are zero.” He said if (Union home minister) Amit Shah and (SAD leader) Bikram Singh Majithia joined hands and shared the stage, what would happen to the BJP’s promise of drug-free Punjab.
The AAP has 95 MLAs in the 117-member assembly. There is already speculation within AAP circles that the party leadership may replace around a third of its MLAs on the basis of internal surveys.
The assembly elections in Punjab, along with Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, are likely to be held in February-March next year.
Navneet Sharma is a senior journalist with over three decades of experience reporting stories across North India, and managing large teams of reporters. He currently heads HT’s reporting team in Punjab. He has written extensively on politics, public policy, civil services, economy, education, infrastructure and law enforcement agencies. Earlier, he led the reporting team in Haryana and oversaw ‘Haryana Live’ – a weekly supplement – as well as the newspaper’s city pullouts in Punjab.Read More