New Delhi : The Congress is keen on sewing up an anti-Modi alliance at the national level but it will not join hands with the Aam Aadmi Party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken, who held a press conference here on Friday with former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, gave two reasons for keeping AAP out of the alliance, at least in Delhi.
“First, the people of Delhi are rejecting them and second, they together with RSS and activist Anna Hazare, helped Modi come to power at the Centre,” he said.
He was referring to the 2011 anti-corruption movement launched by Hazare and his former close aide Arvind Kejriwal, AAP founder and Delhi chief minister, along with the RSS which led to the decimation of the Congress government in Delhi in 2013 and the UPA government at the Centre in 2014.
AGAINST CENTRAL RULE: All the same, Maken warned the Modi government not to clamp the President’s rule in Delhi by dismissing the elected government in the wake of an unprecedented ‘dharna’ by Kejriwal and his two ministers in the office of the Lt Governor and a similar protest by the BJP in Kejriwal’s office.
He asked both the parties to call off their protests and start working for the development of the city. He called Kejriwal’s protest a ‘dharna tamasha’ to divert attention from his govt’s failure.
Maken said the Congress had made blunder in 2013 by supporting the AAP government that lasted only for 49 days to keep the BJP out as it led to the party’s complete rout in Delhi Assembly.
Terming the AAP protest a scripted drama, he said: “The script of this drama was written on February 20, when the Chief Secretary was attacked after being called for a midnight meeting.”
“We were in government for 15 years under the same constitutional framework but we did not give such excuses like the AAP government. We were also in power when BJP government was at the Centre from 1998-2003. But we did a lot of work. We did not give excuses like the AAP government,” Maken added.