Bungalow No.1, Ravi Shankar Shukla Lane: AAP gets new Delhi address

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was allotted Bungalow No.1 on Ravi Shankar Shukla Lane for its new headquarters, the AAP said in a statement on Thursday.
Currently, the AAP operates out of No. 206, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya (DDU) Marg on Rouse Avenue Road near ITO. However, the space belongs to the Delhi judiciary, which sought to use this space to expand district services.
“The central government has allotted new space for the headquarters of the AAP. The new address of the AAP headquarters will be Bungalow No.1, Ravi Shankar Shukla Lane, New Delhi,” an AAP official said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear when the AAP will be shifting to the new location, which is located at a walking distance from Mandi House roundabout in Lutyens Delhi.
Before it was allotted to the AAP, Bungalow No. 1 was allotted to the Nationalist Congress Party. “It served as NCP’s national office between 2015 and mid-2021. Before NCP moved to this bungalow, it was allotted to a politician as a residence,” an official of NCP (Sharad Pawar) said.
AAP minister Saurabh Bharadwaj welcomed the development.
“In 2014, we became a state party and qualified for office space in Delhi, but the central government did not give us space for office. A government bungalow was allotted to us (for office space), and attempts were being made to oust AAP from its office and push it onto streets,” Bharadwaj said in a statement.
“Now, we are a national party and thus, qualify for one more office space as national party… that was also not being given to us. It is a common courtesy in politics that an office is allotted to a party. It is unfortunate that we had to approach court even for this. We welcome that with repeated directions of the court, the Centre was compelled to allot an office to AAP. They should have allotted the space before we moved the court,” Bharadwaj said.
On June 5, the Delhi high court said the AAP was entitled to a party office space in the national capital and asked the Centre to decide on the matter within the next six weeks. The direction came on a plea filed by the AAP.
The AAP was founded on November 26, 2012, by Arvind Kejriwal following the anti-corruption movement of 2011. In April 2023, the AAP was granted the status of a national party by the Election Commission of India. In 12 years, the AAP has formed full-majority governments in Delhi and Punjab, won five assembly seats in Gujarat and has two MLAs in Goa. It currently has 10 Rajya Sabha MPs and three Lok Sabha MPs, besides several other elected representatives, including the Chandigarh mayor and councillors across different states.
The AAP is currently part of the opposition INDIA bloc and has announced that it will contest the upcoming Haryana assembly elections alone.
The Rouse Avenue Road office was allotted to AAP in 2015 after it formed the government in Delhi with a full majority. Before that, the party used to function from a private rented property in Patel Nagar. Immediately after it was founded in 2012, the party office functioned from a private property in Connaught Place near the Hanuman Mandir which was hired by the party on rent.