A day after dismal performance in Haryana assembly polls, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has decided to contest the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections independently, a party representative announced on Wednesday. AAP spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar stated, "In Delhi, AAP will contest alone. We are capable of fighting the overconfident Congress and arrogant BJP alone." She blamed the Congress for not taking alliance partners seriously in Haryana and ultimately facing a rout due to its overconfidence. Reacting to this, Delhi BJP President Virendra Sachdeva said that the people have decided to punish AAP Convener Arvind Kejriwal for ten years of destruction, and said that an alliance or not between "AAP" and Congress will not make any difference in the upcoming 2025 state assembly elections.
While the AAP received a drubbing in Haryana, with all but one of its 88 candidates losing their deposit, the Congress fell well short of the majority mark, making way for the ruling BJP to return for a third consecutive time. In the election held earlier in the year, the AAP lost the sole seat it contested and the Congress won five out of 10 seats. The AAP and the Congress had fought Lok Sabha elections together in Haryana. In 2019, the party contested and lost in 46 seats.
"The Congress has had zero seats in the Delhi assembly for the past 10 years, yet AAP gave Congress three seats in the Lok Sabha polls; still they did not feel necessary to take allies along in Haryana," she said. Kakkar claimed that Congress thwarted all efforts by the INDIA bloc to forge an alliance in Haryana and "didn't feel it necessary to take its ally along with them." The AAP and Congress failed to stitch up a pre-poll alliance due to differences over seat sharing.
Kakkar attributed the AAP's winning one seat in the Jammu and Kashmir to the party's development-driven politics. AAP National Convener Arvind Kejriwal is scheduled to visit Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, she said.For the past month, senior AAP leaders, including chief Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha, were campaigning in Haryana.
On the last day of campaigning, Kejriwal and Sisodia had said during public addresses that the government will not be formed without its support.
Meanwhile, Delhi BJP president stated that the remarks by "AAP" leaders Sanjay Singh and Priyanka Kakkar on the AAP-Congress alliance are part of Arvind Kejriwal's deliberate strategy. “After the humiliating defeat in Haryana, Kejriwal knows that from his party workers to the media, everyone wants to question him and his party. In such a scenario, Kejriwal used his own leaders to make statements on the alliance to divert the discussion among the public and the media from the shameful defeat,” he stated. The Delhi BJP chief added that even before the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress and "AAP" had formed an alliance in Delhi, but neither party benefited from it.
In a statement, Delhi Congress president Devender Yadav said that the party is on a strong wicket to contest the Assembly elections on its own without any tie up with the "tainted" AAP. He said the party had no credibility left after all its top leaders, including Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, were arrested and jailed in the liquor scam.
