2019 polls: DELHI may witness a triangular contest again
NEW DELHI: With India reaching towards the 2019 general elections, the question blowing in the wind of the national Capital (Delhi) is that “Will Delhi see a united fight against the BJP by AAP and Congress?” In less than six months to the general election, the political future of Delhi got a big blow on Thursday after ruling AAP decided to abstain from the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson election. Hours after the voting got over with the victory of NDA candidate as Deputy Chairperson, Delhi Congress Chief Ajay Maken hit back at Delhi CM and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal making it clear that there is hardly any possibility that both the party will go for an alliance. “Congress is the reason we abstained, Rahul Gandhi is the reason why “grand alliance” fell apart on Thursday,” said AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh. He also said that if the Congress asks for their vote, they will oblige. It is meaningless to vote compulsively (for the Congress) if they do not need it.
Hitting back at the claims and blames, Maken said, “AAP would have been ‘history' if the Congress had not supported the AAP to form government in Delhi in 2013. AAP supports the BJP by selectively fielding the AAP candidates against the Congress. AAP supported the BJP in the Rajya Sabha on the issue of signing the impeachment motion against the Chief Justice of India.”
He also said that soon after forming the government in Delhi in 2013 with the Congress' support, the AAP lodged FIRS against the party leaders and fielded candidates against all sitting Congress MPS in Delhi in the Parliamentary elections in 2014 to ensure BJP victory. Maken also asked those “in the media supporting liberal views –will you wait for another Nitish or Patnaik”, referring to the Chief Ministers of Bihar and Orissa respectively, who ditched the Congress to join hands with the BJP.
In the 2014 general elections in Delhi, the BJP got 46.40 percent votes, the AAP got 32.90 percent while Congress got a mere 15.10 percent. The total vote percentage of these two major opposition parties was around 48 percent, nearly 2 percent higher than that of BJP. In the 2017 MCD election, BJP was polled 37 percent of votes, AAP got 26 percent votes and Congress' vote share was 21 percent. Once again, the combined vote share of AAP and Congress was 47 percent, 10 percent higher than that of BJP.
Kejriwal had formed his first government in Delhi in 2013 with the support of the Congress but he resigned from his post after 49 days in power. Recently, during his protest at the house of Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, he had received support from many non-bjp parties but not from the Congress, whose leader, Maken, had dismissed Kejriwal's sit-in as ‘drama.'