The Aam Aadmi Party on Saturday blamed the Congress for failing to forge an alliance to contest the 18 Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, Haryana and Chandigarh, Hindustan Times reported. Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the Congress had “wasted time” in the name of discussion over alliances to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“The Congress was doing timepass, it had no intention of having an alliance in Haryana,” Sisodia claimed at a press conference on Saturday. “The sole reason for us to go for an alliance with the Congress was to defeat the Modi-Shah pair in the election and not to fight over which party contests how many seats in these 18 Lok Sabha constituencies. But the Congress backtracked from the last agreed seat-sharing arrangement for Haryana.”
Sisodia said the three parties – AAP, Congress and Jannayak Janata Party – had agreed to the Congress’s proposal for a 7:2:1 seat-sharing arrangement in Haryana. The Congress was to contest seven seats, the Jannayak Party two and the AAP one. “But after we agreed on this, the Congress retreated from the arrangement again,” Sisodia said.
Sisodia said Congress did not have a single legislator in Delhi and polled 10% during the 2014 elections. “But still they want three seats in Delhi,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “We have maintained that AAP took birth fighting the Congress. But at a time Modi-Shah is posing a grave danger to the social fabric of our country, we mulled over alliances, including in Delhi.”
AAP leader Sanjay Singh said a “strong message” would have been conveyed if there an alliance had been formed to contest the 18 seats in Delhi, Haryana and Chandigarh. “They [Congress] are just not ready to accept any offer,” he said. “I am saying this with all responsibility that yesterday the Congress closed the Haryana chapter.”
On Wednesday, Singh had said that talks for an alliance with the Congress for the elections were called off after the Congress refused the proposal for a tie-up in Haryana.
AAP leader Gopal Rai had said on Friday that they were giving Congress another chance to form an alliance. “We have given Congress a last chance to think it over, let’s see what happens,” he had said. The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have not yet announced candidates for the seven seats in Delhi, while the AAP has announced nominees for all the seats.
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