It is not just a seat of Delhi for which the AAP did not declare a candidate on Saturday that indicates it is still looking for an alliance with the Congress; there's more to it
New Delhi: Gopal Rai, convenor of Aam Aadmi Party for the Lok Sabha election 2019, on Saturday declared the names of party candidates for six of the seven seats in Delhi.
According to sources, Atishi Marlena will contest from the East Delhi constituency while Guggan Singh will contest from North Western Delhi.
The AAP's political affairs committee member Raghav Chadha will contest from South Delhi and Pankaj Gupta will contest from Chandni Chowk seat.
Dilip Pandey will contest from North-East Delhi and Brajesh Goyal from New Delhi seats.
The party has not yet decided which constituency will contest from the West Delhi seat.
There can be a coalition between the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party in the Lok Sabha elections, both in and outside Delhi. The initial talks between the two parties have reached a tentative agreement. To defeat BJP, the two parties are ready to contest elections as a pre-poll alliance. However, a seat-sharing formula is what the two parties are unable to finalise.
A senior Congress leader said that his party is discussing the contours of the possible alliance with the AAP in Delhi. Both the parties can contest elections in three seats each in the capital. One seat can be given to a celebrity. For this seat, the name of former Union minister Yashwant Sinha or BJP's rebellious MP Shatrughan Sinha is being considered.
The AAP, while wanting to contest the elections in more than three seats in Delhi and four in Punjab has staked a claim on Chandigarh, too.
The Congress is not ready to cooperate with the AAP in Delhi, but Trinamool Congress chief Mamta Banerjee and CM Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh are constantly exerting pressure on the Congress for this alliance. A party leader said that this matter was taken up after the meeting of opposition leaders on February 27. After this, Delhi Pradesh Congress President Sheila Dikshit held a meeting with senior leaders of the state Congress on Friday.
A leader of Delhi Congress said that most of the leaders in the party are not in favour of the alliance. However, he added that any order of the high command will be accepted by all party workers. There are many in the AICC who are in favour of this coalition.
A source in the AAP said, in the case of an alliance with the Congress, one or more candidates of the party could be withdrawn or the party would go soft on the campaign for some seats after the Congress announces its candidates, effectively throwing at the BJP the challenge of a bipolar contest.
Traditionally, it is believed that the middle class of Delhi backs the BJP while slums and unauthorised colonies, which is a much larger constituency than that of the saffron party, vote for freebies and doles that the AAP and Congress offer. For the past five Assembly elections, the BJP's vote share has been in the range of 30-33%. An AAP-Congress alliance will, therefore, be a formidable challenge for the party ruling at the Centre.
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