Congress closes alliance doors on AAP in Delhi
- Bitter past, no clarity over assembly elections, lack of trust said to be behind move
- Congress state unit ‘unanimously’ decided not to have an alliance with AAP for Lok Sabha polls
In a setback to the opposition Mahagathbandhan, the Congress on Tuesday shut its doors on an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that rules Delhi. The decision was taken after the Congress’s state unit told party president Rahul Gandhi that it did not favour an alliance with the party led by Arvind Kejriwal.
Senior opposition leaders such as West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar have tried to bring the arch rivals of Delhi together to pool together anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) votes, raising the possibility of an alliance between the Congress and AAP.
“We have unanimously decided that we will not have an alliance with the AAP and we will contest alone and will emerge stronger,” Delhi Congress president Sheila Dikshit said after a meeting of state party leaders with Gandhi on Tuesday morning.
Gandhi is said to have “agreed” with the state unit’s stand.
After the announcement, Delhi chief minister Kejriwal, who is AAP’s national convener, alleged that there was a secret understanding between the Congress and the BJP, adding that Delhi was ready to “fight against Congress-BJP alliance” and defeat them.
The official announcement on Tuesday was preceded by months of speculation, fuelled further by a meeting between Gandhi and Kejriwal at an opposition conclave in Delhi on 13 February. A day later, Kejriwal had announced that “Congress has almost said no to the alliance”.
Kejriwal had written to Gandhi on “multiple occasions”, unsuccessfully seeking to meet him, according to people aware of the developments. In the last two weeks, there have also been informal meetings between senior Congress leader and treasurer Ahmed Patel and AAP’s senior leader Sanjay Singh.
“There was no offer of seat-sharing from AAP or us. The basic idea of an alliance was turned down by the state unit with the exception of a small section, which was in favour of a tie-up,” said a senior Congress leader from Delhi requesting anonymity.
Another Congress leader put it down to “a lack of trust, no clarity over state polls and a bitter past”.
Delhi has seven seats in the Lok Sabha, all of which are held by the BJP. The AAP has declared candidates for six of the seven seats.
Senior AAP leaders said that the party was keen to have an alliance with the Congress, not just in Delhi but also in Haryana and Punjab for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
“There were no talks between the two parties in the last three days. As a party, we were only considering this alliance for the Lok Sabha elections and not for Assembly elections. Though we have differences with the Congress, we only agreed to the alliance for the sake of the mahagathbandan,” a senior AAP leader said, on condition of anonymity.
pretika.k@livemint.com
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First Published:5 Mar 2019, 11:58 PM IST
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