Congress party’s Delhi unit president Ajay Maken on Saturday rejected the Aam Aadmi Party’s reported offer to leave 2-3 seats for the next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
Addressing a hurriedly-called press conference, Maken said, “As I said, they (AAP) made the start by announcing five seats and leaving two seats for us. Then they said they will leave three seats for the Congress. Whether it is two or three, the Congress party is not at all interested in joining hands with Kejriwal, who’s been rejected by the people of Delhi.”
Maken also said that the Delhi Chief Minister had defamed his party to create a ‘monster called (Narendra) Modi.’ He said, “The one who has defamed the Congress and created a monster called Modi is Arvind Kejriwal. I, as the President of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee, on behalf of all the Congress leaders and workers, confirm that no one from our party wants to support Kejriwal. When the people are not supporting him, we will also not support.”
Maken’s clarification came amidst media reports that the AAP and his party had begun talks to stitch a Karnataka-like alliance. There were reports that Maken along with another senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh had even held talks with the AAP leadership.
Soon after Maken’s press conference, AAP’s media advisor, Nagendar Sharma, called Maken a ‘joker’ alleging that it was the Delhi Congress president, who had wished for three seats in Delhi. Sharma tweeted, “A joker first day-dreams of three Lok Sabha seats offer then next day realises nobody on earth will even spare a single seat for a party which finished a poor third on all seven Delhi seats in 2014 & lost its security deposit in four seats. Show guts & announce your seat.”
A joker first day-dreams of three Lok Sabha seats offer then next day realises nobody on earth will even spare a single seat for a party which finished a poor third on all seven Delhi seats in 2014 & lost its security deposit in four seats. Show guts & announce your seat
— Nagendar Sharma (@sharmanagendar) June 2, 2018
In the last assembly elections of 2015, AAP had won 67 out of 70 seats in Delhi. The Congress had failed to open its account. The Congress is also peeved that Kejriwal ran a ‘dirty and personal’ campaign against the then Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in 2013.
Kejriwal was in Karnataka to attend the swearing in ceremony of the HD Kumaraswamy, who became the chief minister of Karnataka with the Congress support despite fighting a bitter election against the same party.
More recently all opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh had fielded a united candidate in Kairana, where the BJP had to bite the dust, losing the seat that it won by more than two lakh votes in 2014.
