New Delhi: Casting a shadow over the Opposition front’s upcoming talks in Mumbai — to be held on 31 August and 1 September — the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Wednesday threatened to walk out of the INDIA alliance, following Congress leader Alka Lamba’s statement that leaders of the party’s Delhi unit have been directed to fan out across all seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital ahead of the 2024 general elections.
Speaking to the media after the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee’s (DPCC) meeting with Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi earlier in the day, Lamba said that “while no decision has been taken on seat-sharing in Delhi”, the high command has instructed the Delhi unit to start preparing for next year’s Lok Sabha polls across all seven seats in the national capital.
This prompted the AAP to issue its statement, virtually threatening to quit the INDIA alliance. “If the Congress has decided to contest all the seven seats in Delhi alone, then there is no point in going to the INDIA alliance’s meeting. Our top leadership will decide whether or not to attend the next meeting of the alliance,” AAP chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar told the media.
Soon after, the AAP also announced that it will hold a town hall interaction featuring Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann in poll-bound Chhattisgarh’s capital Raipur on 19 August.
Following the controversy, Deepak Babaria — the Congress’s Delhi and Haryana in-charge — said, “I had clearly said after the meeting that there were no discussions regarding alliance”.
The development, yet again, foregrounded the trust deficit between the Congress and the AAP, while also lending credence to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) claim that the INDIA alliance remains a divided house owing to internal contradictions among its constituents at the state level, be it in Delhi, or West Bengal or Kerala, among others.
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The AAP-Congress equation
To be sure, following the three-hour-long meeting Wednesday, the Congress did not rule out the possibility of seat-sharing with the AAP, with both Lamba and Babaria insisting that the focus of the discussions was on reviving the party’s organisational base in the national capital, which it governed between 1998-2013.
“We discussed ways to make our organisational presence robust ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Senior leaders and heads of the party’s frontal wings were present in the meeting. There was unanimity on the fact that governance in Delhi was directionless now, as opposed to the strong leadership provided by [former Chief Minister] Sheila Dikshit. Both the AAP and the BJP have failed on this front,” Babaria had told reporters after the meeting.
He also accused the AAP and BJP of promoting “anti-people” policies in Delhi, while claiming that the question of seat-sharing will be tackled by the Congress high command. DPCC president Anil Chaudhary, former Union Minister Ajay Maken and former MP Sandeep Dikshit were among the prominent faces of the Congress’s Delhi unit who attended the meeting.
Babaria’s statement did not elicit any reaction from the AAP. Minutes after Babaria, Lamba spoke to reporters separately, where she maintained that no call has been taken on seat-sharing, while adding that “the instruction from Rahul Gandhi to us has been to fan out across all the seven seats and make preparations (to contest) over the next seven months”.
The equations between the AAP and the Congress had dominated the Patna talks of the Opposition bloc in June, with Kejriwal then seeking assurance from Kharge and Rahul that the Congress would oppose the now-passed Delhi services bill in the Rajya Sabha. Kejriwal, along with Mann and AAP Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha, attended the Bengaluru meeting of the Opposition in July — where the alliance name INDIA was decided — only after the Congress pledged to oppose the Bill.
However, the bill sailed through the Rajya Sabha this month, with non-BJP parties Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) supporting it. A total of 130 MPs voted in favour of the Bill, while 102 voted against. Union Home Minister Amit Shah also taunted the Congress over its stand, saying while it was keen on saving the alliance, the “AAP will anyway desert you after the Bill is passed”.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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