In Gujarat, the AAP vote share is around 12 per cent, and it has won five seats. This means it has met the criteria — 6 per cent vote and two seats — to be recognised as a ‘state party’ by the Election Commission. This will be the fourth state where it gets the ‘state party’ recognition, as it has fulfilled the ‘6 per cent votes plus two seats’ criteria in Delhi, Punjab and Goa already. 

In Delhi, it got the status after it won 29 seats in the 2013 assembly polls. That government lasted just seven weeks, but it has since returned to form the government in the national capital twice, winning record victories in 2015 and 2020. 

In Punjab, it had got the ‘state party’ status as it won 20 of the 117 assembly seats and nearly a quarter of the votes in 2017. And this year it got a whopping 91 seats, forming its second state government after Delhi.

Goa got it closer. In the assembly polls early this year, the AAP won two seats and 6.77 per cent votes — again fulfilling the criteria to become ‘state party’. It needed that recognition in just one more state to get ‘national party’ status, which it achieved today in Gujarat. It had prioritised Gujarat over Himachal, where it got just 1 per cent votes and no seats.

After the Election Commission’s formal nod, the AAP will become the eighth party currently with national status, the others being Congress, BJP, Mayawati’s BSP, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the CPI (Marxist), Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.