The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Thursday named the three Lok Sabha constituencies in Haryana in which it will be fielding candidates, while its ally in the state, the Jannayak Janata Party(JJP), went on to name its candidates in four constituencies.

The two parties said they will together contest in all 10 seats in Haryana — JJP will field candidates in seven seats, while AAP will do the same in three of the remaining seats. The state will go to polls on May 12, the same day as Delhi.

While AAP indicated that an alliance with the Congress in Haryana is now unlikely, the potential tie-up between the
two in Delhi continues to be uncertain.

In a joint press conference in Delhi on Thursday, AAP said that it is fielding candidates from Faridabad, Karnal and Ambala (reserved) Lok Sabha seats, but did not disclose their names.

The JJP, on the other hand, have named candidates from Hisar, Sirsa (reserved), Rohtak and Bhiwani-Mahendergarh seats. JJP chief Dushyant Chautala shall be contesting from Hisar, Nirmal Singh Malhadi from Sirsa, Pradeep Deswal from Rohtak and Swati Yadav from Bhiwani-Mahendergarh.

In Haryana, the constituencies from which the JJP is yet to name candidates include Kurukshetra, Sonipat and Gurgaon.

“People have speculated about the Congress. But we have maintained that Chaudhari Devi Lal left the Congress in 1971. And since then we have been fighting the Congress. We will never go with the Congress,” said JJP chief Dushyant Chautala, who named himself as the candidate from Hisar.

AAP’s Delhi convener Gopal Rai said: “The AAP’s fight is against a Hitler-like regime. The attempts to tie-up with the Congress was part of the larger goal. Yesterday [Wednesday], we tried till the last moment. But the Congress just doesn’t seem to realise how important it is to join hands and fight against the BJP.”

Thursday’s announcement came a day after senior functionaries of AAP and the Congress said the two parties were failing to reach a consensus over seat sharing in Haryana. The AAP has so far maintained that a tie-up will the Congress will happen in Delhi only if it happens in Haryana.

On Wednesday, Sanjay Singh of AAP and Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress had met to discuss over the alliance in Haryana. The Congress had offered a 7:2:1 deal for Haryana, taking the largest share and leaving two for the JJP and one for AAP, senior party functionaries had said. AAP, on the other hand, insisted on the Congress giving up one more seat to the JJP (which means a seat sharing formula of 6:3:1), a senior AAP functionaries said, and that was where the deal got stuck.

On Thursday, the AAP’s Haryana unit chief Naveen Jaihind confirmed the developments of the meeting.

Delhi Congress in-charge PC Chacko, on Thursday, said that the alliance with AAP was “almost finalised” in Delhi, however the AAP leaders backtracked at the last moment.

First Published: Apr 19, 2019 05:25 IST