New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal said Sunday that the party will contest the Delhi assembly polls—due in February 2025—solo, ruling out any tie-up with the Congress, which has its back against the wall after facing election defeats in Maharashtra and Haryana.
Kejriwal’s categorical assertion comes at a time when the Delhi unit of the Congress is carrying out a padyatra (foot march) in the national capital against the “misgovernance” of the AAP government. AAP, meanwhile, has inducted a number of Congress leaders in its ranks in the past few weeks.
Yet, with Kejriwal having refrained from commenting thus far on a possible AAP-Congress alliance in the assembly polls, many felt he was keeping the doors open for a last-minute deal.
However, on Sunday, responding to a question at a press conference, he signalled that he had already made up his mind on the issue. “There will be no alliance in Delhi,” the former Delhi chief minister said, when asked about the speculations about his party’s seat-sharing talks with the Congress.
According to political analysts, the development portends bad news for a beleaguered Congress, which could have benefitted from a strong showing in the Delhi elections. The AAP chief was paying back in kind to the Congress for being denied a few seats in Haryana, they said.
“This is a big setback to the Congress, which is not just staring at yet another defeat in Delhi, but also zero seats for the third consecutive time. It was hoping to get 5-10 seats to contest in as part of an alliance with the AAP,” author and commentator Rasheed Kidwai told ThePrint.
Sanjay Kumar, professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), said that the Congress’s recent electoral setbacks were a factor behind Kejriwal’s decision. “In Haryana, the Congress, as the dominant partner, denied the AAP any seats. In Delhi, AAP as the dominant partner, saw no reason to concede seats,” Kumar, the co-director of the CSDS-Lokniti programme, told ThePrint.
Right after the Haryana poll results, Kejriwal had taken a swipe at the Congress, saying that “one should never be overconfident in the elections”.
The AAP, which was born out of the India Against Corruption movement against the Congress-led UPA II (United Progressive Alliance) government, has reduced the Congress to irrelevance in Delhi over the years. In 2013, it ended the Congress’s 15-year rule there and went on to script two major victories in the 2015 and 2020 assembly polls.
In 2022, AAP also captured Punjab, once again dislodging the Congress from power. In Gujarat last year, it won five seats and pocketed a vote share of around 14 percent as Congress’s share further shrank. In Goa, too, AAP made inroads at Congress’s expense.
However, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s hegemonic rise and the criminal cases against the AAP leadership in the excise policy case brought the latter closer to Congress in the recent years. What could not materialise in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, despite efforts from both sides, took shape in the 2024 general elections under the aegis of the INDIA bloc.
Under the coalition’s umbrella, the two parties contested jointly in Delhi, Haryana, Gujarat, Goa and Chandigarh. There was no seat-sharing in Punjab though as Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann conveyed his strong disapproval to any such attempt under his watch in the state.
Congress’s dismal show in Haryana & Maharashtra
Kidwai, a long-time observer of the Congress, said that the Congress’s dismal show in Maharashtra and Haryana had robbed the party of the aura generated by its 99-seat rally in this year’s Lok Sabha polls. “It is very difficult for the Congress to stomach the idea of co-equals in an alliance. In India, traditionally, alliances have a dominant partner. The Congress enjoyed that stature in the UPA. Now, it’s not just the AAP, even the RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) will drive a hard bargain with the party in Bihar, where assembly polls are due next year as well.”
While the Congress was eyeing a win in the capital’s minority-dominated pockets, particularly in light of the disenchantment among a section of the Muslim community over AAP’s political approach during and after the 2020 communal riots in the city, Kidwai said even the minorities may have seen through the Congress’s weakness.
“Had the Congress done well in the recent round of assembly polls, there could have been a shift of the minority votes to the party in Delhi, too. In such a situation, even Kejriwal would have been on his knees for an alliance,” he said.
Incidentally, among the Congress leaders that joined AAP over the past few weeks is three-time MLA from Seelampur—the epicentre of the riots—Chaudhary Mateen Ahmed. He is among the 11 assembly poll candidates, whose names have so far been announced by the AAP. Former Congress MLA Veer Singh Dhingan has also been fielded by the party.
Delhi Congress unit chief Devender Yadav, who is leading the efforts to revive the party in the national capital through the on-going padyatra, has been attacking the AAP, maintaining that no alliance was on the cards.
He told reporters that there was no point for the Congress to carry the “weight of anti-incumbency” that the AAP was facing by entering into an alliance. He also termed the tie-up between the two parties in the Lok Sabha polls a “mistake”. The yatra is likely to culminate at Raj Ghat this week in the presence of the Congress’s top leadership, including its president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rae Bareli MP Rahul Gandhi, and Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
AAP’s chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar told ThePrint, “The alliance during Lok Sabha was for a larger cause to save the Constitution and defeat the undemocratic BJP government. In the assembly elections, we are presenting our 10 years’ report card.”
