Kejriwal Launches AAP Student Wing

After three months of near-total absence from the political stage, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief and former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal finally reappeared in Delhi on Tuesday, launching the party's new students wing—the Association of Students for Alternative Politics (ASAP)—at Constitution Club.

- Alok KN Mishra

NEW DELHI/CHANDIGARH:

The AAP national convener, dressed in his trademark half-sleeved shirt and trousers, addressed the gathering for 12 minutes before leaving without interacting with the students who had come from Delhi, Haryana, and Punjab.

The launch marked Kejriwal's first public appearance in the Capital since the AAP's resounding defeat in the Delhi assembly elections in February—a result that saw the party, which ruled Delhi with a brute majority from 2015 to 2025, lose its stronghold.

Kejriwal had himself lost the New Delhi seat to BJP's Parvesh Verma by 4,199 votes, and the party's tally fell from 62 to just 22 seats.

In his absence from the Assembly, the AAP named former CM Atishi as the Leader of Opposition. But Kejriwal's retreat from the public eye has raised eyebrows—and questions—even within his own party.

"He used to dominate the city's political discourse—addressing the media regularly, clashing with the Centre, steering strategy meetings. His silence now is deafening," said Tanvir Aeijaz, associate professor of political science at Ramjas College. "Even when the AAP wasn't in power in the past, Kejriwal was never invisible. That has changed."