After Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit on Tuesday, 5 March, announced that the party would not ally with the Aam Aadmi Party ahead of the upcoming elections, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the Congress is helping BJP by splitting the anti-BJP vote.
The AAP chief took to Twitter to allege that the Congress has “some secret understanding” with the BJP and Delhi is ready to fight against the “Congress-BJP alliance.”
Dikshit on Tuesday announced that there won’t be an alliance between the Congress and the ruling Aam Aadmi Party ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The announcement came after it was reported that Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had called for a meeting with the Delhi unit leaders to discuss the possibility of an alliance with AAP.
“In the presence of Rahul Gandhi, a unanimous decision has been taken that there will be no alliance in Delhi.”Sheila Dikshit
AAP leader and Delhi minister Gopal Rai, while addressing the media after the developments, said that the Congress “has been speaking the language of BJP in Delhi”.
“Why is the Congress party inclined to help the BJP, the nation wants to know,” he said.
“The Congress' final announcement shows that it is hell bent on helping the BJP, it seems [that] for them, the party is bigger than the country. Could it be that the Congress has made an unofficial alliance with the BJP? ” he added.
“We (the AAP) were desperate for the alliance only for saving the democracy, so that the BJP could be thrown out. We were ready to swallow the poison (of allying with the Congress) for the country,” he further stated.
Last week, AAP had announced names of candidates for six of the seven parliamentary constituencies in the national capital.
AAP's Delhi Convenor and minister Gopal Rai after the announcement had told the media that the party is open for alliance talks with Congress to prevent BJP from coming back to power.
"On 13 February, when Congress President Rahul Gandhi met AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal during a meeting of Opposition leaders, he rejected the alliance. We were told they are re-thinking,” Rai had said.
(With inputs from Hindustan Times)
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