Kejriwal to announce AAP’s chief ministerial candidate for Punjab elections today at 12

The party has received around 22 lakh responses as part of its campaign to choose its CM face for the assembly elections. Last week, the Aam Aadmi Party had launched the survey as part of its ‘Janata Chungi Apna CM’ campaign, through which Kejriwal asked the people of Punjab to suggest names of their favorite chief ministerial candidates and for the purpose, a Mobile no. was launched. Kejriwal has said that his own priority for this post is Bhagwant Mann.

Senior party leader Harpal Singh Cheema had said that in 24 hours, over eight lakh people have responded to the phone number issued by AAP to choose the face of the Chief Minister in Punjab.

The AAP party had received over three lakh WhatsApp messages, over four lakh phone calls, over 50,000 text messages and over one lakh voice messages within 24 hours of the campaign’s announcement.

A mobile number was launched by the party on which people could give their opinion on who should be the party’s chief ministerial candidate by recording their voices and sending text or WhatsApp messages till 5 pm on January 17.

Polling for 117 assembly seats in Punjab is to be held on February 20 and the counting of votes will take place on March 10.

Accepting the demand of political parties, the Election Commission on Monday decided to hold the assembly elections in Punjab in one phase on February 20 instead of February 14 in view of Guru Ravidas Jayanti.

Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and political parties in the state had urged the Election Commission to postpone the date of polling as lakhs of followers of Guru Ravidas visit Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh to celebrate his birth anniversary on February 16.

Channi had said that the members of the Scheduled Caste community were likely to come to Varanasi from February 10 to 16, so they would not be able to vote in the elections.