AAP’s 1st Haryana Poll List Amid Impasse In Alliance Talks With Congress
New Delhi:
An AAP-Congress alliance for next month’s Haryana election appeared unlikely Monday afternoon after the former’s state unit boss, Sushil Gupta, said his party will contest all 90 seats on its own. This was minutes after the AAP released a first list of 20 election hopefuls, including naming 11 to jostle for seats to which the Congress had already named candidates.
A second list will be “released soon”, Mr Gupta said.
The AAP was in ‘wait and watch’ mode till last week as talks with the Congress hit a roadblock. The two parties had reached an ‘in-principle’ deal to re-form the alliance that stopped the BJP from sweeping Haryana’s 10 Lok Sabha seats for a second straight election.
But working out a seat-share deal proved difficult; the AAP wanted at least 10 seats but the Congress was only willing to concede seven, pointing out its ally had failed to win the seat allotted to it – Kurukshetra, won by the BJP’ Naveen Jindal – in the general election.
Sources also said the AAP wanted seats in former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s turf, and which he was expecting to allot to loyalists. Mr Hooda told NDTV last month he had not spoken to the AAP’s state leaders since the general election, and that the alliance was not state-specific.
“The alliance we had was at the national levels. We have not spoken to them. Here the fight is between BJP and Congress,” he said.
On Saturday the Congress’ Deepak Babaria said his party would offer only a “small number” of seats. The AAP’s Raghav Chadha then spoke of “desire, wish, and hope for an alliance” from both parties, but warned a deal may not happen “if there is no win-win situation…”
Talks over a possible alliance were nudged into reality by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, who, sources said, was aware the opposition will once again need to unite to defeat the BJP, particularly in a Hindi heartland state that the saffron party has dominated since 2014.
But the AAP’s poor show in the Lok Sabha election left the Congress with the upper hand in seat-share talks, a position underlined by several state leaders who expressed concern over allying with Mr Kejriwal’s party in a state election.
The Congress’ position, its state leaders believe, has also been strengthened by the signing of wrestlers Vinesh Phogat and Bajrang Punia, who have been leading protests against sex assault-accused former wrestling body chief Brij Bhushan Singh. Ms Phogat will contest the Julana seat while Mr Punia will lead the party’s farmers’ support body.
