‘There will be no alliance’: Arvind Kejriwal reiterates AAP stand of going solo in Delhi polls | Delhi News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday reiterated his party’s stand against having any type of a political tie-up in the capital for the upcoming Delhi assembly polls.
Replying to a query during a press conference at AAP headquarters, Kejriwal said, “There will be no alliance in Delhi.”
This is not the first time that an AAP leader had categorically denied having any type of an alliance with Congress in the state assembly elections. AAP forged a seat-sharing arrangement with Congress for seven parliamentary seats in Delhi in Lok Sabha polls earlier this year but failed to win any.
Since then, both AAP and Congress leaders have mentioned that there will be no alliance for the state assembly polls, though there was speculation that the two parties were involved in hectic parleys behind the curtains.
Soon after the Lok Sabha polls, AAP’s Delhi state convener, Gopal Rai, had made a statement that seat-sharing arrangement with Congress, which was part of the INDI alliance, was limited to the parliamentary elections in the capital and there was no plan to extend it to the assembly polls.
While AAP and Congress had joined hands on seven Lok Sabha seats in the capital, the two parties had contested against each other in Punjab.
The Haryana assembly elections in Oct this year too saw both AAP and Congress contesting separately, though senior functionaries of the two parties had a number of meetings to have an understanding and division of seats, which didn’t fructify.
With Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav on Friday reconfirmed his party’s stand against any possibility of an alliance with AAP, Kejriwal’s statement seemed to be the final nail in the coffin.
Reacting to Kejriwal’s statement on Sunday, Yadav reiterated that Delhi Congress was “very clear” that it would not have any understanding with any party and will contest Delhi Assembly elections alone, on all 70 seats.
“When we forged an alliance with AAP for the Lok Sabha elections, we knew that we would have to contend with people’s opposition, which eventually happened. Had Congress contested the Lok Sabha elections alone… we would have been the gainer. Congress candidates suffered setbacks only due to its alliance with AAP,” Yadav said.
The election for the 70-member Delhi assembly is due in Feb next year. AAP convincingly won the last election by bagging 62 of the 70 seats while the BJP got the remaining eight. Congress failed to win a single seat.