The Aam Aadmi Party is going broke and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is asking people to donate money to keep the AAP running in Delhi. And within a day after his emotional appeal on camera, over 500 contributors have contributed more than Rs 6.5 lakhs to his Aam Aadmi Party. The party which solemnly believes in crowd funding has a special website where the funding details are constantly updated. Since November 2014, it had received Rs 21 crore from more than 51,000 donors, most of whom probably gave the party funding for the elections that were held in February. All of that money, according to Kejriwal, has been spent.

Addressing the people on Monday, Arvind Kejriwal said "you would say I am an odd Chief Minister for asking for funds like this. You will say we made him Chief Minister, still he is asking for money. We can get money the wrong way but that is not who we are. Your 10 rupees will help us pursue honest politics.” He also added, “since we came to power, our funds have dried up. Now we want funds to run our party and we want it from the public. You people funded us, we never had any money to fight polls, and we never took any money secretly from big shots. Now after forming a government, whatever money we had is over. We need money to run the party.”

This isn’t the first time when Arvind Kejriwal has appealed for funding. Last year in February, he asked people to donate to AAP on social media and within two days, the party had over Rs 1 crore in its bank account. But in the last fifteen days, there have been more troughs than crests in the party’s donation number. There was a new low on Saturday, when only Rs 709 was donated all day. But looking at the total amount of funding, the party has done relatively well in receiving donations from people since it came into power.

The latest appeal comes as AAP faces criticism for spending most of its funds and government money on advertisements to glorify and gain political mileage for its leaders.