According to TV reports, RSS has criticized the BJP for the way it has handled the AAP challenge.
BJP chief Rajnath Singh, the reports say, has been pulled up for the party's strategy against the new party.
The Congress, on the other hand, has dismissed any challenge to Rahul Gandhi from AAP leader Kumar Vishwas who has announced that he will contest against the Congress vice-president, saying the AAP leader "does not exist at all" in Amethi whose electorate share an emotional bond with the Nehru-Gandhi family.
"I am not going to comment on surveys and poll forecasting, which are done at regular interval by different agencies before the polls. ...Congress party can speak on its strategy, its mechanism when the appropriate time comes," party general secretary Ambika Soni told reporters.
Speaking about selection of candidates, she said, "Some office bearers of the party are deciding all this, they are meeting people, people from states, the chief ministers, the PCCs and the CLP leaders are coming. The names of potential candidates are being given and information is being gathered about them.
"The attempt is that one who can win and has the support of the grass roots is given the Congress ticket. Rahul Gandhi wants to bring such people forward."
Union minister Salman Khurshid merely said, "I find it very difficult to believe that (survey) but I am very glad that you believe that" when asked about the survey findings.
Asked about the challenge to Rahul Gandhi from the candidature of Vishwas in Amethi, Rajya Sabha MP and former CLP leader of Uttar Pradesh Pramod Tiwari said that he has known Amethi since 1977 when Sanjay Gandhi had contested from the seat and the electorate their share and "emotional bond" with the Gandhi family.
"I can say with full confidence, full authority after going through the constituency that Kumar Vishwas does not exist in Amethi at all.... Amethi has been served by the family members Sanjay Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. There is a family emotional bond. They respect the family.
"What has Kumar Vishwas done in that constituency and what is the identity of Kumar Vishwas. He is just a poet," he said, declining that there were any similarities with Delhi where Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit lost to Arvind Kejriwal in the recent assembly election.
An opinion poll across the country's eight most populous cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad — conducted exclusively for TOI by market research agency IPSOS has shown that India's biggest metropolises are eagerly looking forward to the Aam Aadmi Party going national and expect it to make a big splash in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
However, a majority still view Narendra Modi as a better prime ministerial prospect than Arvind Kejriwal with Rahul Gandhi a distant third.
The survey found that a third of the respondents thought AAP would win between 26 and 50 seats, another 26% felt it could win 51-100 seats, 11% said it would bag more than 100 and 5% even predicted a majority for the party. Put together, that means three-fourths of all those polled believe AAP will win more seats in 2014 than any party, barring what Congress and BJP won in 2009.
Given that 44% of those polled said they would vote for an AAP candidate if there was one in their constituency, and another 27% said they might, depending on the candidate, it is not difficult to see why the respondents rate AAP's electoral prospects so high.
As for prime ministerial preferences, 58% picked Modi, 25% were for Kejriwal — despite AAP making it clear he is not in the running — and only 14% thought Rahul Gandhi would make the best PM. In Chennai and Mumbai, Kejriwal was preferred over Modi, and even in Modi's home turf, Ahmedabad, 31% thought Kejriwal was the best choice.
(With inputs from PTI)
Also read:
44% of voters in India's top metropolises say they will vote AAP for Lok Sabha: TOI poll
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