NEW DELHI: Speculations about the possibility of an alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party and Congress in Delhi refuse to die out. Keeping the political pot boiling, Congress president Rahul Gandhi set the ball rolling once again by publicly offering four out of the seven seats to the AAP.
“An alliance between the Congress and AAP in Delhi would mean the rout of the BJP. The Congress is willing to give up 4 Delhi seats to the AAP to ensure this. But, Kejriwal has done yet another U-turn! Our doors are still open, but the clock is running out,” Gandhi said in a tweet.
Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal took to social media to respond.
“Today country needs saving from the Modi-Shah duo you tweet shows that you are not serious about an alliance...” replied Kejriwal in Hindi.
Soon after the social media exchange, AAP leaders went into a huddle at the Delhi CM’s residence.
After deliberations, that went on till late into the night, the AAP came up with a counteroffer. According to a senior AAP official, who did not wish to be named, should the Congress come offer 5 seats for AAP and 2 for the Congress, it would be acceptable to them.
BJP’s dig at ‘alliance’
“Rahul Baba, BJP’s ‘alliance’ is with the people of Delhi, we are committed to work for people and nation. But I do thank you that you have accepted that Kejriwal is not reliable and takes U-turn, Delhi will never trust AAP again,” said Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari
Voter cards: Gupta, Chadha write to EC
The Aam Aadmi Party and the BJP on Monday wrote to the Election Commission demanding an inquiry into a case of missing electoral photo identity cards.
According to AAP candidate from South Delhi Raghav Chadha, a bag with 200 such cards was found dumped along with garbage.
“Over 200 undelivered voter ID cards have been retrieved from a garbage dump on the Badarpur-Tajpur-Pahadi road. Upon inspection, it has been found that all of these belong to voters registered during the voter registration camps that were organised by the AAP,” said Chadha.
The AAP, which has been at loggerheads with the EC for some time on the issue of deletion of voters from the list and malfunctioning EVM machines, demanded an inquiry into the matter.
“The incident highlights a shocking and sorry state of affairs where the best situation one can hope for is that an inquiry will discover that this was a case of officials and employees in the election being slothful and careless,” Chadha said in his letter to the Chief Election Commissioner.
Later, senior BJP leader Vijender Gupta urged the Chief Election Commissioner to conduct an in-depth inquiry into the allegations raised by Chadha.
“It cannot be denied that the whole episode could be stage managed by AAP. The party has acquired expertise in spreading lies. It had launched misinformation campaign about the deletion of 30 lakh names of voters which was later on found to be false,” he wrote.