Congress willing to ally in Delhi, but AAP wants Punjab, Haryana & Goa too

The two parties have been tangoing around the idea of an alliance for a while now, and a divided Congress has left the final call with Rahul Gandhi.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal waves at his supporters during a public meeting, in the walled city area of New Delhi| PTI

New Delhi: The Congress is now inclined to have an alliance with the Aam Admi Party (AAP) but it’s the latter that is holding up a pact by moving the goalpost.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wants the Congress to spare one of the two Lok Sabha seats in Goa, five of the 10 in Haryana and two of Punjab’s 13 for the party, a Congress functionary privy to the deliberations told ThePrint.

In Delhi, too, the AAP wants the Congress to contest on just two of the seven seats, the functionary added.

This comes at a time when the Congress is veering around to the idea of stitching an alliance with AAP to forge a united front against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had swept all seven seats in the national capital in 2014.

Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit and many other senior members are opposed to the idea, but party president Rahul Gandhi, after two rounds of meetings with Delhi leaders, has decided to seek party workers’ view on the idea.

When the question was floated through the Congress’ Shakti platform, a digital interface between the party brass and its cadres, the majority of workers said they were in favour of an alliance with the AAP in the Lok Sabha elections.

Although the Congress president hasn’t spoken on this issue since, back-channel talks were opened with the AAP, party insiders told ThePrint.

It was during these talks, the insiders claimed, that Kejriwal placed the fresh demand, tying the Delhi alliance with that in three other states.

The AAP take

According to sources in the AAP, when NCP leader Sharad Pawar tried to play mediator between the two parties, the party “unofficially proposed” an alliance in the national capital along with tie-ups in Punjab and Haryana.

“The Congress has offered to ally only in Delhi. The party won’t accept that,” a source in the AAP told ThePrint.

According to another source, if the Congress wanted the AAP to yield one more seat in Delhi — that is, let the Congress contest on three seats — the latter could be compensated with an additional constituency in another state.

“At most, if they want to decrease a seat in Delhi, they can add another in a different state. Say we settle for four in Delhi, we’d like four instead of three in Punjab,” another AAP source told ThePrint.

However, the party’s official stance remains that the Congress has not contacted the AAP at all.

“These are all rumours, we have not received any official communication from the Congress,” senior AAP leader Sanjay Singh told ThePrint. “We can’t talk hypothetically.”

While it swept the Delhi assembly election in 2015 by winning 67 of 70 seats, the AAP recorded a lacklustre performance in its maiden parliamentary election five years ago.

In 2014, it fielded candidates from 432 of 543 Lok Sabha seats, but won just four, in Punjab.

As for assembly elections in the other three states where the AAP is said to seeking a tie-up, it surpassed Punjab’s bigger players like the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) to wrest the second largest seat share, 20 of 117, in 2017. However, it contested 39 of Goa’s 40 seats the same year, but lost its deposit in 38. The party didn’t contest the 2014 assembly election in Haryana.

‘Defeat BJP’

When asked about the alliance, senior Congress leader P.C. Chacko, who is the party in-charge for Delhi, said the final decision will be taken by the Congress president.

“Though the state unit of Delhi has finally agreed to an alliance to defeat the BJP, in Haryana and Punjab they have categorically said no,” said another Congress functionary.

“In Punjab, the state unit is confident of winning all the seats on its own, so there’s no question of an alliance,” the functionary added. “But AAP is pressing for an alliance in Goa, Haryana and Punjab as well.”

Despite the Congress’ recent assertion that they are willing to ally with the AAP to defeat the BJP, the Kejriwal-led party has continuously accused it, especially the state unit, of putting its own interests first.

To ally or not to ally

The AAP and the Congress have now been tangoing around the idea of a possible alliance for this Lok Sabha election, which starts 11 April, for months.

Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) chief Sheila Dikshit had refuted the possibility of a tie-up earlier this month after a meeting between local party members and the party brass.

Her stance, however, was at odds with that of senior Congress leaders such as Chacko and Ajay Maken — the latter was opposed to the idea during his stint as DPCC chief, which ended in January after he quit, but has warmed up to it since.

According to Congress sources, even Gandhi was initially not in favour of the alliance as he held AAP leaders such as Kejriwal responsible for the party’s ouster from power at the Centre in 2014.

Kejriwal was part of the 2011 anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by social activist Anna Hazare that had tapped deep public resentment against government graft to bring lakhs to the streets for demonstrations.

Gandhi is, however, under pressure from senior party colleagues, who argue that the priority for the party at this stage is to remove Prime Minister Narendra Modi from office. In the absence of a Congress alliance with the AAP, they’ve told him, the BJP could pull off a 2014 encore and win all seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital.