Even though Delhi accounts for a mere seven seats in the Lok Sabha, there is intense jockeying in the national capital for who gains the upper hand in the upcoming general elections. While it is no secret that the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party had been contemplating an alliance to trounce the BJP which had swept the seven seats in 2014, there is no finality about the alliance with posturing on both sides.
It was speculated that Delhi pradesh Congress committee chief Ajay Maken had bowed out to facilitate the appointment of a leader better disposed towards AAP. There was a parallel in AAP with HS Phoolka quitting the party for its leadership seeking to align with the Congress which was allegedly behind the anti-Sikh carnage in the wake of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984.
Just when things were moving towards a clincher has come AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal’s warning to people at a public event not to vote for the Congress because that would ‘strengthen the BJP’ whose seven sitting MPs ‘did nothing for Delhi’s development.’ Instead, he said, the people must give all Delhi seats to AAP.
In the 2015 Assembly elections, the vote share difference between the Congress and AAP was more than 40 per cent. Two years later, in the 2017 municipal polls, it had been reduced to around five per cent and in the assembly by-polls which followed, Congress gained the upper hand.
Before AAP notched up a steamroller win in the assembly polls in 2015, it had promised an all-out war on corruption promising to slap cases on the outgoing chief minister Sheila Dikshit and other Congress leaders. Once in power, all that was conveniently forgotten as the BJP became enemy number one.
This was just one of the promises of Kejriwal on which he went back without a credible explanation. There were many more on which the people of Delhi are feeling cheated about. This time around, an alliance between AAP and Congress seemed well on the way for Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Goa and the Union Territory of Chandigarh but Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has put a spanner in the works.
His statement that AAP in Punjab is an insignificant player has set Rahul Gandhi thinking. That also explains Kejriwal’s public statement to people not to vote for the Congress, apprehensive that the tie-up would not work out. Amarinder said after a meeting with Rahul Gandhi on Monday that the Punjab Congress had already conveyed to the high command that there was no need for the Congress to tie up with AAP in Punjab. Other State units of Congress are also not keen on an AAP tie-up and would prefer to go it alone though the Central leadership wants it.
Amarinder, indeed, is no pushover. In the last assembly elections in Punjab, he had advised Rahul to concentrate on other states and not bother about campaigning in Punjab and Rahul had taken the hint that he was unwelcome, and stayed away. Only an Amarinder could do that to Rahul who is regarded as a sacred cow of the Congress.
While Amarinder has said that a decision on an alliance with AAP would be taken by the high command, in regard to Punjab there are no illusions that Amarinder can be over-ruled only at the party high command’s peril. He has already tolerated his ministerial colleague Navjot Singh Sidhu’s indiscretions in deference to the high command and Rahul knows that he cannot be pushed beyond a point.
If Punjab is left out of any arrangement between the Congress and AAP, the whole edifice of any agreement would collapse. It is inconceivable that AAP would then be interested in a tie-up sans Punjab. The Delhi AAP cadres can hardly ignore the fact that their party had welcomed the conviction of Sajjan Kumar for the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 which Congressmen had deeply resented.
In any event, going by the manner in which the Congress dealt with the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, there is little that AAP can expect from Congress in Delhi except a couple of seats of the seven at stake. More crucial for AAP would be the assembly polls in 2020 which are still distant.
Kejriwal’s rise in national politics has largely been at the cost of the Congress in the national capital and to some extent in Punjab. Till Kejriwal arrived on the scene, Congress had won three assembly elections (1998, 2003 and 2008) under the stewardship of Sheila Dikshit, who held the office of chief minister for three terms. Despite pursuing development-oriented politics, Dikshit could not withstand the political tsunami created by charges of corruption brought mostly against central Congress leaders, and faced a humiliating defeat in 2013.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Kejriwal impact was seen in neighbouring Punjab, where his party won four seats and cut into the votes of the Congress. Though Captain Amarinder Singh managed to win his key battle against now Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at Amritsar, his wife Praneet Kaur lost on their home turf of Patiala to the AAP candidate.
A minister in the Manmohan Singh government, Kaur had won the Patiala seat in 1999, 2004 and 2009 before losing to cardiologist Dharamvir Gandhi in 2014. All in all, the odds are stacked against a Congress-AAP alliance but nothing can be ruled out in the uncertainty that clouds our politics.
Kamlendra Kanwar is a political commentator and columnist. He has authored four books.