Hardeep Singh Puri mocks AAP for its ‘desperate’ bid for alliance

NEW DELHI: Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri has slammed Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for becoming “desperate” to have an alliance with Congress in Delhi for the Lok Sabha elections. The minister said quite contrary to 2015 when AAP had also support from middle and upper middle classes, now it’s facing crisis due to its eroded support base.
“AAP was started with the main objective of rooting out corruption, which was the hallmark of Congress.But now he is begging for Congress to have an alliance. He wants political power. He is already facing credibility crisis. The CM perhaps hopes that simple and ‘one to one’ fight could help them win,” Puri said told TOI amid reports of both Congress and AAP making last-ditch efforts to come together to take on BJP in the capital.
The minister’s criticism comes at a time when some voices within AAP are also coming out against an alliance with Congress. “While AAP was established with the basic principle to involve its workers and volunteers in decision making, this time they did not went to public openly to take their feedback. But Congress reached out to its cadre to get sense of their feeling about alliance,” an AAP leader said.
Lashing out at the Kejriwal and his party for raising the statehood issue, Puri said the entire AAP machinery was resorting to the “diverting tactics”. Puri said, “Listen what they claimed - elect all seven MPs from AAP and they will get full statehood for Delhi. Will seven MPs get give full statehood in a House that has 545 MPs? They are talking nonsense and people are not believing them.”
The minister said AAP was losing its support base fast. He added while in 2014-15, Kejriwal’s party had some resonance even in upscale colonies. “But he has made no secret that he is taking actions completely against this growing aspirational middle class. He is completely banking on unauthorised colonies without doing anything to regularise those colonies. We had told him in 2015 and 2017 that we want to regularise the colonies. His government said they would take two years. Now when we ask him, he says the agency that will carry out the ground mapping will take another four months to start work. So, practically he has pushed the timeline to 2021,” Puri said.