Bangalore: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has estimated that its membership in the State may touch five lakh by January 26.

But, party volunteers say that the State unit may not be devoid of members who may have joined just to make a fashion statement.

Filtering out non-serious members may bring down its total registration in the State.

Nonetheless, AAP volunteers believe that the State may register the second or third highest membership after Delhi and Mumbai.

The selection process of the candidates for the 28 Lok Sabha seats will begin after January 30.

AAP State convenor Siddharth Sharma told Deccan Herald, “We are not going to bend the rules for any partyhopper or a celebrity who intends to contest the elections from our party. All interested candidates will have to submit their forms online with their basic details,” said Sharma.

Besides the form, every aspirant will have to secure signatures of 100 people, along with their phone numbers and voter IDs, from each of the eight Assembly segments in the Lok Sabha constituency from where he or she intends to contest. The AAP has set a deadline of January 30 for the forms to be submitted.

The ‘less genuine’ and ‘ineligible’ candidates under the People’s Representation Act will be filtered out. The AAP is hoping that this process will leave only the serious candidates in the list, whose profiles will be posted online for people to debate upon. In rural areas, the feedback about the candidates will be taken by those from the AAP district offices by going door-to-door.

AAP will assess its cadre strength in every constituency before taking a final decision on how many seats they will contest from.

Registration lines flooded
The party’s helpline is flooded with calls for registering as members, leading to a severe load on the phone lines. The service has been outsourced to a private company. But, the overloading has led AAP to consider setting up a temporary BPO facility.