NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday denied reports of having an alliance with Congress for the upcoming assembly polls in Delhi. The former Delhi chief minister said that the AAP will be fighting the elections “on its own strength” and that there is “no possibility” of “any alliance with Congress”.
The Delhi assembly elections, scheduled for early 2025, have sparked a war of words between INDIA bloc partners, with both AAP and Congress firmly denying any possibility of an alliance in the national capital.
A senior AAP functionary had told TOI that an alliance with Congress was never on the party’s discussion board, while Congress state chief Devender Yadav said that if the party had contested alone in the Lok Sabha elections, it would have “won a seat or two.”
“We would have fared better and even won a seat or two if we had not allied with AAP. Also, our Nyay Yatras across constituencies show that there is intense anti-incumbency against AAP. Why should we take on the weight of the ruling party’s anti-incumbency by even exploring an alliance. Congress is better off going into the fight on all 70 seats on its own and that is what we are doing,” Yadav told TOI.
The BJP swept all seven seats in Delhi in the Lok Sabha polls.
Earlier, Both AAP and Congress leaders have said that there will be no alliance for the upcoming Delhi elections. Following the Lok Sabha elections, AAP’s Delhi convener, Gopal Rai, had said that the seat-sharing arrangement with Congress, part of the INDIA bloc, was only for the parliamentary polls and would not extend to the assembly elections.
In Haryana’s October assembly elections, both parties also ran independently, despite multiple meetings to discuss a possible seat-sharing agreement, which ultimately failed. Delhi Congress chief had reiterated his party’s stance against an alliance with AAP, and following Kejriwal’s comments on Sunday, Yadav made it clear that Congress would contest all 70 Delhi seats alone. Yadav added that Congress would have performed better in the Lok Sabha elections had it not allied with AAP.
AAP, which won 67 and 62 seats in the 2015 and 2020 Delhi Assembly elections, is aiming for a third consecutive term.