The Aam Aadmi Party has categorically ruled out any alliance with the Congress, putting to rest all speculation around the two INDIA bloc partners reuniting for the elections to the Delhi Assembly slated to be held early next year.
Former Chief Minister and AAP’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal said that the party will contest the elections on its own. “Aam Aadmi Party will be fighting this election on its own strength in Delhi. There is no possibility of any alliance with Congress,” Kejriwal said in a post on X.
The remarks were seen as a clarification of sorts after it was reported that the two parties were actively engaged in talks for a possible alliance ahead of the Delhi polls and that the Congress had demanded 15 seats as part of the agreement.
Kejriwal’s remarks after the reported discussions on seat-sharing suggest that the talks went the same way they did in Punjab and then in Haryana earlier this year. While the AAP refused to accommodate Congress during the Lok Sabha elections in Punjab where it is in power, the grand old party returned the favour during the Assembly elections in Haryana and the deal never went through.
The acrimony between the AAP, which has been growing at the cost of the Congress over the past few years, is not new and dates back to the days of the Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement over a decade ago. While its national ambitions may have forced its hand to ally with the Congress nationally, and momentarily, the two parties have little in common other than a common enemy in the form of the BJP.
This lack of commonality also reflects deep within the rank and file of the AAP as well as the Congress. When talks between the two parties appeared to be progressing positively in Haryana and Punjab, the local leadership of the Congress objected to the alliance with AAP (vice versa in Punjab) and made their discomfort clear in ceding space to the party they only saw as a competitor.
But then, Delhi is no Haryana or Punjab – and the elections in the capital bear different characteristics when it comes to the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The AAP has been in power in the state since December 2013 barring a one-year tenure of President’s rule.
In the 2020 elections, the AAP won 62 of the 70 Assembly seats in the capital, marginally lower than the 67 it held in the previous Assembly. With a brute mandate at its command, and the confidence that it could easily return to power in the capital on its own, an alliance would only amount to weakening its own organisational strength.
“I am making it clear that AAP will contest the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections on its own strength. There is no question of any alliance. The reports of any kind of alliance between AAP and Congress are baseless. The AAP has won the last three Delhi elections alone, on its own. Fourth time also, when there will be Assembly elections in 2025, AAP will contest based on its work and Arvind Kejriwal's name, and win," AAP MP Raghav Chadha said earlier today.
Besides, much has changed since the Lok Sabha election results when an upbeat Congress led the Opposition and deprived the BJP of achieving a majority on its own. The back-to-back defeats in Haryana and Maharashtra have dealt a body blow to its standing within the Opposition with several parties now beginning to openly question the grand old party’s role as the ‘big brother’.
Kejriwal’s refusal, if it holds, only reveals the limited space it is willing to cede to the Congress in Delhi where it hopes to return to power for the fourth consecutive time.
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