Congress yet to tell us about seat plan: AAP

NEW DELHI:

AAP

on Monday said it hasn’t received any proposal on seat sharing from Congress. AAP leaders clarified that CM Arvind Kejriwal’s statement that Rahul Gandhi has said ‘no’ to alliance is not a new development. “He (Rahul) had made the statement in past,” said AAP leader Sanjay Singh.


The ‘no’ had come during a meeting in the second week of February where Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee and some other leaders were present. Then in March, Kejriwal proposed an AAP-Congress-JJP alliance in Haryana to Rahul Gandhi and he did not say ‘no’. Since then, a lot of developments with regard to the alliance have happened.

There’s a buzz that Congress has offered four seats to AAP in Delhi, one in Haryana and none in Punjab. AICC in-charge for Delhi, P C Chacko, and other leaders have said that Congress needs an alliance with AAP to defeat BJP. But Chacko stresses that the final word on this will be Rahul Gandhi’s.

But AAP Delhi convenor Gopal Rai dismissed the seat-sharing buzz. “Congress is totally confused about the issue of alliance. It is working particularly in areas where the BJP is weak and opposition (non-BJP) parties are strong. In a way, Congress is helping BJP,” Rai said, emphasising that AAP is preparing to contest on all seven seats in Delhi. It has already declared its candidates.

This uncertainty about the alliance is confusing some AAP candidates who fear their seats might go to Congress in case there is an alliance.

Meanwhile, Rai also shot off a letter to Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari on Monday, telling him that AAP will approach EC with the charge that Tiwari is misleading pepole on full statehood. The party had earlier claimed Tiwari had lied on the statehood matter.

“When AAP has launched a full-scale struggle for full statehood for Delhi, you are consistently stating that Delhi can’t be given full statehood since the Supreme Court has denied it. This is a blatant lie and you are misleading the people of Delhi by propagating this lie,” Rai wrote.

He asked Tiwari if he knew that the Parliament can grant full statehood to Delhi by amending the Constitution. He also said that BJP won on all seven seats by promising full statehood but did nothing about it later. “The obvious question is why did you deceive the innocent people of Delhi?” Rai wrote.