Showcasing a joint front, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday held their first joint meeting for the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi in the Shakur Basti area of the Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency to campaign for Congress candidate Jai Prakash Agarwal.
Agarwal will face off against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominee Praveen Khandelwal in the polls on May 25.
Shakur Basti is an AAP stronghold, and is the assembly constituency from where jailed party leader Satyendra Jain has won the last three state elections. Speaking at the joint party meet, Agarwal said that the Congress-AAP alliance is working “seamlessly”.
“In Allahabad, two rivers — the Ganga and the Yamuna, both with different moods — meet but flow onwards with no difference. The Congress and AAP alliance is working seamlessly. These (BJP) leaders started saying that they will cross 400 seats and change the Constitution, so that nobody is able to stand against them. That is when all parties had to come together and think about how this dictatorship can be stopped,” Agarwal said.
“If we stayed separate, they would try to break parties, buy MLAs and jail chief ministers. We have seen dirty politics in Maharashtra, then Karnataka, and then they tried to buy MLAs in Delhi,” he said.
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Agarwal said the alliance is a necessity, especially in Delhi, claiming that the seven BJP MPs from the Capital never raised any issue in Parliament.
“There is not a single project that was either started, completed or was demanded in Parliament. I got to know that in the last 10 years, the seven MPs from Delhi never raised a single question in the Parliament. Should we assume that there is no problem or concern in Delhi?” he said.
The AAP-Congress meet came two days after Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely resigned from his position, citing his party’s alliance with the AAP.
When asked about Lovely’s resignation, Agarwal refused to comment. “I will only talk about the issues in my Lok Sabha constituency, Chandni Chowk,” he said.
AAP workers, meanwhile, said that the people were happy with Agarwal’s nomination and would support him in the election.
“The alliance is going to win all seven seats in Delhi, but Chandni Chowk is where we are most comfortable. Agarwal is a seasoned leader and our opposition has never won a large majority from this seat,” said AAP member Dr Arun Gupta.
The BJP, meanwhile, said the AAP-Congress alliance will collapse.
“Howsoever AAP or Congress leaders may try to portray things, it’s clear that on the ground that the leaders and the workers are poles apart, and by May 25, the alliance will collapse,” Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said.
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“The truth is that AAP MLAs don’t want a revival of the Congress, fearing problems in the assembly elections. Revived Congressmen may demand MLA seats too, in which sitting AAP MLAs stand to lose,” he said.
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