Padma Mohanty
Delhi | The Delhi Chief Minister and the President of AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) Arvind Kejriwal met Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Delhi recently to discuss regarding joining hands for the upcoming Lok Sabha Elections but the later refused.
New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency has 7 Lok sabha seats. The AAP wants to form an Alliance with Congress so that the votes of the 7 seats doesn’t gets divided and they together can defeat the opposition BJP, but Congress is not ready for the alliance.
According to Kejriwal there should be one opposition party standing against BJP, all the parties who want BJP not to come in powers again at the center to be united and defeat BJP by forming a majority. In the 2014 general election when the three parties (BJP, Congress, AAP) contested separately, the sum of the votes of the Congress and AAP was almost 49% of the total that is 45% more than what BJP got.
[bctt tweet=”Can AAP and Other parties allign to defeat NaMo Sarkar? Share your views”]If all the parties in Delhi have the same sole aim to defeat BJP then they all should join hands, this is what Mr. Kejriwal says. In the last general election, if the votes of the candidates of the AAP and Congress be added up then both the parties jointly won 6 seats out of 7, they could not win the West Delhi seat, where Parvesh Sahib Singh, the son of the former CM Sahib Singh Verma got more votes than the Congress and AAP candidates.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was in Visakhapatnam on Sunday evening to attend a mega rally. He and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee were invited by Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu to work on strategies to defeat BJP. While leaving for Delhi at Visakhapatnam airport he told reporters, “There is nothing on the alliance with Congress. We had one meeting with Rahul Gandhi where he refused.” Delhi Congress President Sheila Dikshit previously said that AAP has never approached Congress regarding alliance. On this Mr. Kejriwal said, they have met Rahul, Sheila is not that important person.
Last night there was a meeting at Congress’s Delhi Head Sheila Dikshit’s house where other senior leaders of Congress PC Chacko and KC Venugopal were also present, according to reports they started shortlisting candidates for the 7 Lok Sabha seats. So there is a very little chance of the alliance but till now no formal announcement has been done from the side of Congress whether they are ready for the alliance or not, however an announcement can be expected in a day or two.
After all these Mr. Kejriwal said he does not need Congress support to win the 7 seats from Delhi. But by joining hands they can win the 10 seats of Punjab and Haryana. He said, “ Rahul Gandhi should think about an alliance in Haryana… People of the country want to defeat the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo. If in Haryana, JJP (Jannayak Janata Party), AAP and Congress fight together, then the BJP will lose in all 10 seats.”
After few days the picture will be clear, whether the Congress and AAP are joining hands or are they contesting separately. Delhi’s General Election is on May 12th and the results will be declared on May 23rd.
