Uncertainty has gripped the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) over its plan to make a foray into the coming Gujarat assembly elections in the wake of the party's successive debacles in the recent Goa and Punjab assembly polls as well as the Delhi municipal elections. The Gujarat polls are scheduled to be held in December 2017.

AAP sources told The Statesman that in view of the party's recent back-to-back electoral setbacks besides the raging intra-party power struggle, the party leadership seems to have been compelled to put the Gujarat poll plan on hold.

It is another matter that the AAP had been all geared up earlier to enter the Gujarat electoral arena and take on the incumbent BJP which has been ruling the state for the last 19 years that includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 12-year-long tenure as its chief minister.

The AAP's Gujarat in-charge and Delhi Labour Minister, Gopal Rai had earlier been camping regularly in Gujarat in order to expand the party's organisational base there.

On 26 March, the AAP also held a state-level volunteers' meeting in Ahmedabad to launch  the ground work for the elections in the BJP's strongest bastion.

Rai, who is now also the AAP's Delhi convener, had then announced that the party would contest all 182 assembly seats in Gujarat.

Sources however said that a string of poll drubbings in recent months and their adverse political and organisational fallout have now forced the AAP top brass to rethink their Gujarat strategy before firming up a decision whether to contest the election or pull out from the formidable battlefield.

On 30 April, the AAP's Political Affairs Committee (PAC), its highest decision-making body,

called off its meeting which was supposed to discuss the party's strategy for the Gujarat elections.

The AAP's electoral track-record has not been impressive anyways in Gujarat where even the principal Opposition Congress has been relegated to the margins for many years.

The AAP had contested the 2012 assembly elections and the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat, but it lost hugely on both occasions with candidates losing their security deposits. In 2012 assembly elections, the AAP contested on 7 seats while in 2014 Lok Sabha polls it fought in 24 seats without winning any seat.

The AAP's communication head and national spokesman, Dilip Pandey told The Statesman that the party's bid to contest polls in Gujarat will be decided by the PAC in due course.

"Our volunteers in Gujarat are continuing their work to garner support for the party. But the decision to contest the election will be taken by the party's top leadership in coming days," Pandey said.