Delhi congress Won’t Have alliance With aap
However, Congress and AAP don’t rule out post-poll alliance with each other.
The Delhi unit of the Congress has once again categorically denied atriking an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the national capital for the Lok Sabha elections slated later this year.
Sharmistha Mukherjee, spokesperson and senior leader of the Delhi Congress, told The Sunday Guardian: “Time and again, the Delhi Congress has made it clear that we are not going to go for any alliance with the AAP in the national capital. Our state president Sheilaji and also the former president Ajay Makenji have made it clear that there is no question of an alliance with the AAP as far as the Lok Sabha elections are concerned. I do not know why this question comes up every time.”
She further added that the Congress is going to contest all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi alone and the party is ready to take on both the AAP and the Bharatiya Janata Party alone in Delhi.
“We have prepared ourselves to go to the elections alone and we are capable of it,” she said.
According to sources in the Delhi Congress, the Congress is keen on fighting the Lok Sabha elections alone to boost the morale of the cadre in Delhi and to keep the Congress relevant in Delhi.
A source in the Delhi Congress said, “Delhi is the national capital and going for an alliance with the AAP would show that the Congress has gone weak here in the capital which is why it is ready to forge an alliance with a party that ousted the Congress, which ruled Delhi for 15 years. This would also be detrimental to the morale of Congress workers in Delhi who have been working for the last four years to bring the party back to life.”
Another senior Congress leader said, “The Congress has been working to revive itself all this time and I would say that we have been able to revive ourselves very well in the last few years. We are confident of winning at least three of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi; so why should we get into an alliance with the AAP and lower our prospects?”
However, both the Congress and AAP did not rule out any post-poll alliance with each other and both have said that if the result is such that the need arises for an alliance between these two parties to keep the BJP away from forming a government at the Centre, neither of them will shy away from coming together.
On the other hand, the AAP has been desperately wanting an alliance with the Congress to keep the BJP at bay in the national capital. AAP National Convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said that he and the AAP were tired of convincing the Congress for an alliance between them, but “they do not understand”.
According to AAP sources, AAP is keen for this alliance because they feel that according to the 2014 and the 2015 vote share, an alliance between AAP and Congress would lead to a debacle for the BJP in Delhi.
Also, AAP sources have indicated that some of their internal surveys done recently have shown that voters from the minority community and voters from the marginalised sections, who were the core voters of AAP in 2015, are slowly shifting back to the Congress, which the AAP wants to cash in on by forging an alliance with the Congress.
A source in the AAP said: “It has come to light that in some areas, the voters are shifting to the Congress and we have been told that the reason is that AAP is not a national player. They would vote for the Congress during the Lok Sabha elections as Congress is a national party and their vote would, therefore, not be wasted by casting it for AAP. This is the reason why AAP desperately wants to ally with the Congress.” Highly placed sources told The Sunday Guardian that Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav reached out to a
BJP veteran through the latter’s confidant and offered to make him his party’s candidate from Lucknow and his son an MLC. The BJP stalwart is apprehensive that he will not be fielded in the Lok Sabha elections as he is way past the cut off age. However, after a few days the BJP veteran is said to have refused Akhilesh’s offer by saying that he has lived his entire life under the RSS banner and at this juncture he wouldn’t like to switch sides and face brickbats. This means that Akhilesh Yadav does not have a good party candidate for Lucknow, where, it is clear that Home Minister Rajnath Singh will be the BJP candidate again. Akhilesh, however, is in touch with many senior BJP leaders who, he thinks, may be interested in switching sides if denied the ticket to fight elections. The buzz is that 35% of BJP MPS may be denied tickets for various reasons, including non-performance. Former Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary, P. Rama Mohana Rao, who was the most trusted bureaucrat of the late Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, has plunged into politics. Rao, who belongs to Andhra Pradesh, joined the Jana Sena party of Pawan Kalyan, a popular Telugu actor. Pawan Kalyan, whose real name is Konidela Kalyan Babu is the younger brother of wellknown actor Chiranjeevi.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian from Vijaywada, Rao said, “I see Jayalalithaa-like qualities in Kalyan and I will make all efforts to make him AP CM.”
In Tamil Nadu, Rao was believed to have implemented many welfare schemes and had worked out Amma’s campaign to ensure her last victory before her death. In December 2016, weeks after her death, the income-tax department had raided Rao’s office, residence and his relatives. The I-T department had claimed that “huge unaccounted for cash was seized from his premises”. Later, it was discovered that the cash seized was less than Rs 1 lakh. But the damage had been done. Rao was removed from the top post and was later posted as Director of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute, Chennai until his retirement in 2017.
Kalyan told this writer over telephone that “Rao effectively ran the AIDMK government without any hassle when CM Jayalalithaa was in hospital. Great people like Rao have come forward to serve my party with lots of confidence in me.”
Rao said that Andhra Pradesh was in complete distress and when the people were looking for a messiah to protect them, “Kalyan entered the political arena. Kalyan believes serving people is serving God.”