Congress, AAP to decide on pact within 48 hours

NEW DELHI: After much dilly dallying, the Congress and the AAP are going to take a call within the next 48 hours on whether to stitch an alliance to take on Amit Shah-Narendra Modi combine in the seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital.

Political pundits are keeping their fingers crossed on whether the two parties would go in for 3:3:1 formula for sharing seats. They are, however, sceptical that any such move may not go well with the rank and file of their workers who had been fighting a pitched battle against each other over a host of contentious issues in the national capital. So far, the seat-sharing formula is that both the parties will field three candidates each while the seventh one will be a neutral player. The neutral candidate is likely to be former Union minister and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha.

While the AAP leaders had taken the lead in offering partnership to the Congress, the division within the latter had forced the party to hold back its decision on any  alliance for the parliamentary polls. Sources said that when former Union minister Ajay Maken was in-charge of the Delhi Congress, he was against any such alliance. But now Mr Maken and party’s in-charge of Delhi affairs P. C. Chacko are of the view that if the two parties don’t fight the elections together, it would split their vote bank and help the BJP sweep all the seven Lok Sabha seats.

But three-time chief minister and Delhi Congress president Sheila Dikshit has been outrightly opposing any such alliance.

She has been maintaining that her workers were able to take on both the AAP and the BJP to win all the seven seats. Even veteran NCP leaders’ efforts to bring together the two warring factions have not borne fruit. Also, there is a fear in the party leadership that the alliance with AAP would demoralise the party cadre who could in a fit of anger go for cross voting in favour of the BJP.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday made it clear that Congress president Rahul Gandhi has refused to forge an alliance with the AAP for the Lok Sabha polls. The  CM said that he had recently met Mr Gandhi and the Congress leader had refused to “join hands with his outfit”.

Asked about  Ms Dikshit’s remarks that Mr Kejriwal never approached her for an alliance, the chief minister said, “We have met Rahul Gandhi. Ms Dikshit is not that important a leader.”

A source in the party had recently said that chances of alliance were “slim” considering its repercussions in Delhi.    “The biggest question is how will the Congress face the AAP in Assembly elections due in 2020 after the tie-up. Besides, the party does not gain much politically as it is being offered only two-three seats by Mr Kejriwal.”

Mr Kejriwal has been urging the Congress to stitch an alliance in Delhi for the Lok Sabha polls to keep the BJP away from power. The AAP has already announced the names of all the candidates for all the seven Lok Sabha seats.

The Congress had to face a humiliating defeat in the previous Assembly elections.