23 December,2025 01:41 AM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Former Delhi CM and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal will campaign in Mumbai, according to AAP. File Pic
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday announced its list of 40 star campaigners for the upcoming BMC Elections 2026 and said that Arvind Kejriwal, Bhagwant Mann and Sanjay Singh are among those to visit Mumbai for campaigning.
According to the list, apart from former Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convener Kejriwal, Punjab Chief Minister Mann and senior leader Sanjay Singh, Manish Sisodia and former Delhi Minister Satyendra Jain are among those who will campaign in Mumbai.
According to the party, several national and state-level leaders will visit Mumbai to campaign for AAP candidates during the civic polls. The list also includes Atishi, Durgesh Pathak, Imran Hussain, Rakhi Bidlan, Amanatullah Khan and Dilip Pandey.
The star campaigner list features leaders from different states and regions, highlighting the party's effort to strengthen its presence in Mumbai. Prominent names include Saurabh Bharadwaj, Harpal Singh Cheema, Praveen Kumar Deshmukh, Vishesh Ravi, Preeti Sharma Menon, Venzy Vigas and Chaitra Vasava.
Other star campaigners named by the party include Prakash Jarwal, Kishore Mandhyan, Ruben Mascarenhas, Sunil Kukreja, Sumitra Shrivastava, Dr Santosh Karmarkar, Sunder Padmukh, Vijay Kshirsagar, Azeem Farooqui, Aditya Paul, Mahesh Chawda, Sudesh Patel, Ishudan Gadvi, Payal Patel, Pankaj Gupta, Ranga Rachure, Ajit Phatke Patil, Vijay Kumbhar, Mukund Kirdat, Devendra Wankhede and Sandeep Desai.
AAP leaders said the party aims to take its governance model to Mumbai and focus on civic issues such as roads, water supply, cleanliness, education and healthcare during the campaign.
The announcement marks the party's formal campaign push ahead of the high-stakes BMC elections, which will decide the control of India's richest municipal body.
Meanwhile, last week on Friday, AAP had announced that it will contest the civic polls in Mumbai independently, fielding candidates in all 227 wards and ruling out any alliance with other political parties.
The party said that the decision marks its formal entry into Mumbai's civic politics and aims to provide an alternative to what it described as decades of misgovernance by established parties.
Addressing the media, Preeti Sharma Menon, AAP Mumbai chief, said that despite Mumbai's status as India's Urbs Prima, civic governance had deteriorated sharply.
"The BMC has an annual budget of Rs 74,447 crore, the largest in Asia. Mumbaikars pay the highest taxes in the country, yet receive poor-quality public services," she said.
Menon alleged that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has become plagued by corruption and inefficiency.
She pointed to the closure of BMC-run schools, declining educational standards, lack of functional primary healthcare centres, overburdened public hospitals, and the steady decline of BEST's bus fleet.
She also highlighted issues such as poor garbage management, shrinking green cover, rising pollution levels, and the discharge of untreated sewage into the sea.
