Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken on Saturday slammed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for not contesting upcoming Delhi assembly polls in alliance with the grand old party and, instead, helping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win all seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital in last three general elections.
“We wanted to contest the Haryana and Delhi elections in alliance with the AAP. But as soon as Arvind Kejriwal came out of jail, he announced that they would contest on all the 90 seats (of Haryana) separately. As far as the Delhi elections are concerned, they announced after the Lok Sabha elections that they will contest Delhi elections alone,” Maken said in a press conference.
Led by Arvind Kejriwal, the AAP is pitted against the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress party in the elections. The AAP won two last elections – 2015 and 2020 – comfortably and is seeking a third straight term to power in the February 5 Delhi Election 2025.
"When Sheila Dikshit was the CM, the Congress won all 7 Lok Sabha seats in Delhi... But after the AAP government came to power in Delhi, the opposite has been happening. BJP wins all the 7 Lok Sabha seats. Then who is with the BJP?...," Maken said.
The Congress party was in power in the national capital for fifteen years until 2013 when Kejriwal-led AAP sprung a surprise and won 28 seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly. The AAP eventually formed a government with the support of the Congress that had won eight seats. The government didn't last long and Kejriwal resigned after 49 days.
In December 2024, almost a month before days of Delhi Election 2025 were announced, Arvind Kejriwal announced that AAP will be fighting the upcoming polls on its own strength, rejecting all possibilities around his party's talks with Congress for a pre-poll alliance.
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