Haryana, September 4: According to sources who spoke with NDTV on Tuesday night, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have agreed to work together to win the Haryana polls next month.
Reportedly, Rahul Gandhi has urged to the members of INDIA bloc to continue the alliance on state level, this request comes ahead of Haryana polls
Dividing out the Assembly’s ninety seats is the next phase, which might be difficult.
According to sources, the Congress is only willing to offer between five and seven seats, while the AAP has requested ten in the early exchanges. The Congress is reportedly also willing to give one seat to the Samajwadi Party of ex Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
According to additional sources, Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal and AAP Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha would probably meet on Wednesday to resolve this.
Nominations close on October 4 and voting will begin on October 5.
There is no information available regarding this alliance’s potential to last through the Haryana election and reach the Delhi Assembly election to be held in 2025, which the AAP has won every time since 2013. However, this time around, the party’s leader and chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, is still imprisoned in connection with the liquor policy case.
All of this occurs just hours after it became known that the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, is recommending that the members of the INDIA bloc maintain the alliance they had prior to the general election between April and June.
According to sources, Mr. Gandhi wished to keep the alliance in place to prevent votes from being split.
REPORT CARD OF CONGRESS-AAP ALLIANCE
In the 2024 Haryana Lok Sabha election, the Congress and AAP contested the state’s 10 seats 9:1.
The Congress won five from its share. The AAP lost Kurukshetra, the one seat it was running for, to Naveen Jindal of the BJP by over 29,000 votes. The two parties’ respective share of the votes was 21.19 percent and 1.11 percent. Altogether, this was far less than the 36.5% that the BJP had gathered.
Furthermore, the Congress’ vote share was lower than what it received in the Assembly elections (the BJP received 36.49 percent) and Lok Sabha elections 2019 (the BJP received almost 58 percent of the votes).
It’s crucial that the Congress and the opposition maintain the momentum created by the party and the INDIA bloc’s impressive performance in the general election.
Regretfully, the AAP did not win the one Haryana seat that it ran for.
This indicates that, going into seat-sharing negotiations, the Congress believes it is in a strong position.
READ: Dhirendra Shastri upcoming visit to Haryana ahead of Assembly Polls
