Strap: Large number of students who wholeheartedly worked behind the scene want to him deliver
The mood across IITs was extremely jubilant as the landslide victory of Aam Admi Party (AAP) unfolded on Tuesday morning. Groups of students in IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur campuses were seen cheering and greeting each other over the party's phenomenal success. The celebrations went on till late night.
A large number of students from the premier institutes have supported Arvind Kejriwal and his party in the Delhi assembly elections.
While most of them were a part of the social media campaign of AAP devising a vibrant and positive online campaign strategy which outsmarted rival BJP, at least 300 of them had posted themselves at Delhi for 10-15 days before the polls for door to door campaign.
Kejriwal is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur (1989 batch) and hence many of the IITians, students and professors both, have a soft corner for him. His daughter Harshita is also a first-year engineering student at IIT Delhi, a fact which mobilised a large number of students from IIT Delhi towards working for AAP.
IIT Bombay, which has as many as 1,000 AAP sympathisers/donors, was in the party mood on Tuesday evening with dancing on the Kejriwal tune literally (a song composed by Bollywood musician Vishal Dadlani, an AAP supporter).
"Our hard work pays off. We hope AAP starts delivering on its promises now," said Ratikant Nayak, an IIT Bombay research student who along with three other IIT-B students campaigned for AAP in Delhi for two weeks. A team of another dozen students handled the vibrant social media campaign of the AAP.
Lokesh Deshmukh, who led the AAP campaign from IIT Kharagpur, said: "AAP supporters gave their 100% to see Kerjiwal as Delhi CM mainly because he presents the kind of politics which youth wants to see. People have very high hopes from him and he will have to fulfill all his promises. His time starts now."
IIT Delhi student Abhishek Agrawal says, "We had supported the BJP in Lok Sabha elections with very high hopes from Narendra Modi, but we didn't not see any change in the country in the past nine months except religious intolerance promoted by right-wing groups and Modi's silence over it. Hope Kejriwal learns from BJP's downfall."
IITians contributed a lot in AAP's victory. The IIT-B team, for instance, created a research tool in November to measure public opinion on social media which helped shape the AAP's election strategy in Delhi.
AAP to push 'Mission Maharashtra'
The AAP would now expand its presence in Maharashtra. Ravi Shrivastav, head of the north Maharashtra wing of AAP, said, "We have already launched our mission Maharashtra sometime back. The time has come to strengthen the mission. Our team has just come back from Delhi. We would start working on it in next few days."
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