The political deadlock between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress appears to continue even after attempts of like-minded parties to form an Opposition alliance ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The exchange of words between the AAP and the Congress over the Centre’s ordinance related to services in Delhi and the AAP’s attempt to isolate the grand old party in the Patna conclave for not supporting them over the ordinance issue has sent a clear message that both the parties are not going to share one platform against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha elections due in 2024.
The rift between both the parties widened when AAP Convener Arvind Kejriwal along with his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann left the opposition meeting in Patna midway and later his party’s general secretary Sandeep Pathak announced in principle support to the controversial Uniform Civil Code if the Centre brings it in Parliament.
Taking a step further, Pathak also cleared the air saying that the party will fight all upcoming elections including the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on its own. Since the attempt to alliance of both parties appears backfired, the picture of Delhi Politics before the Lok Sabha polls is very much clear.
Eyeing to snatch all seven seats of Delhi from the BJP, both parties had explored options to form an alliance before 2019 Lok Sabha elections but their talks failed at the last minute over seat-sharing arrangement.
The AAP leaders had said that an alliance just in Delhi was not possible after the Congress refused to have a tie-up in Haryana and Punjab. AAP’s number two Manish Sisodia, who is in jail over his alleged role in the Delhi Liquor Policy scam, had said that giving three seats to the Congress in the national capital would mean “giving three seats to the BJP” while talking on the 4:3 seat sharing formula proposed by the Congress. Since then the leaders from both parties never enjoyed good relations with each other over a wide range of issues.
Political scenario in the city after the AAP’s emergence
In both 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won all seven Lok Sabha seats while AAP and Congress failed to open their account. In 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the vote share of the BJP was 56.58 per cent. The vote share of the AAP was 32.9 per cent while Congress’ vote share went up to 22.46 per cent.
The AAP came second in all the seats in Delhi in 2014. In 2019, BJP won all seven seats by securing nearly 56.9 per cent votes and the Congress and AAP got 22.5 per cent and 18.1 per cent vote shares.
But in 2015 Delhi Vidhan Sabha elections, the AAP polled about 54.3 per cent of the total vote which was the highest in the history of Delhi elections. The BJP polled 32.2 per cent while the Congress got just 9.7 per cent vote share. A whopping 22 per cent jump over BJP meant that the AAP virtually decimated both the BJP & Congress by winning 95 per cent of the total seats.
A comparison between 2015 and this 2020 assembly election showed that AAP’s vote percentage was 53.57 per cent which marginally dropped by nearly 0.7 percentage points. With 38.5 percent vote share, the BJP finished second position but the Congress party got just 4.26 per cent vote.
In the 2017 MCD elections, BJP won MCD elections while AAP snatched the municipality from BJP in 2022 by ending their 15 years of rule.
With the above data, it is very much clear that BJP has an edge in parliamentary segments while the AAP has an edge in Assembly segments in the national capital and if Congress joins hands with AAP, sweeping all seven seats will not be a cakewalk for the saffron party. Going into seat analysis, AAP-Congress combine may get 3 constituencies of the city while posing a tough fight in the remaining seats.
Secondly, the senior leaders from both parties who have held in their constituencies may pave the way for victory as a division of opposition votes will be minimised up to a certain extent. The AAP, after the arrest of Satyendar Jain in a money laundering case and Manish Sisodia in a new excise policy case, can be seen exploring all options to go with opposition unity for a bigger platform but all attempts of its senior party leaders have backfired as neither Delhi & Punjab units of the Congress nor it’s some senior leaders have publicly rejected the idea of a coalition for Delhi and Punjab.
Many of the Congress leaders have had an issue with the AAP since the emergence of the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement and the inception of the AAP as a political party. With his anti-corruption stand against Manmohan Singh-led central government and Sheila Dixit-led Delhi government, Arvind Kejriwal emerged as a strong face from IAC and later formed the Aam Aadmi Party on the same base. Barely one-and half-year later, the AAP formed a government in Delhi for 49 days in 2014 with the outside support of the Congress whom the newly formed party touted to be ‘most corrupt’. Even after ousting Congress, AAP leaders left no stone unturned to gain political scores by cursing Congress’ previous governments.
On many occasions, the AAP appears to have sided with the Congress and BJP as well which not just created confusion about the party’s stand but portrayed them as a party believing in ‘political opportunism’.
Why relations soured between the two parties
There are lots of episodes and incidents where both parties were seen as opposed to each other and the reason gap between them widened. The AAP claims that it is fighting against the ‘fascist’ approach of the Narendra Modi-led central government hence the Congress should come together by ignoring earlier differences. The Congress, on the other hand, alleges that AAP is a B-team of BJP as it has supported the stand of the saffron party in and outside Parliament.
The Congress leaders also allege that AAP paves the way for BJP in many state elections by fielding its candidates to ensure the division of opposition votes. From the start of the IAC movement and formation of the AAP, not only Kejriwal but many other leaders targeted top Congress leaders including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram, Salman Khurshid, Robert Vadra, Sheila Dixit, etc.
Kejriwal even went on saying to arrest Sonia Gandhi for her alleged role in corruption cases.
He has also targeted Rahul Gandhi on many occasions and has not spared even a single leader from the grand old party. Secondly, the AAP leaders have always alleged that both BJP and Congress have joined hands to loot the country.
Hard stance of the city unit of Congress
Since the AAP formed its government by transferring a major chunk of Congress’ traditional vote bank to the city, Congress leaders kept training their guns against Kejriwal and his party. Whether it is about the education model, power and water subsidy, irregularities in Delhi Jal Board, Delhi Excise Policy Scam or development-related issues, Congress leaders have always opposed AAP dispensation in the city.
Even on some occasions, it appeared that they are siding with the BJP to corner AAP as the recent examples of the election of the Hajj Committee and the election of MCD’s Standing Committee members where their elected representatives abstained from the voting process. Apart from this, Delhi Congress also believes that their revival will only be possible when the AAP will lose its support hence supporting those means weakening the party which has ruled over Delhi for several consecutive terms.
Aiming to defeat the Centre’s ordinance in the Upper House of Parliament, Kejriwal met almost all regional party leaders and sought time from Congress leaders. The majority of opposition parties publicly announced support for AAP against the Centre’s move but the Congress party could not specify its stand on it.
Its leaders opposed Kejriwal’s move saying that the Centre has right to introduce the ordinance for the national capital as Constitution of India has empowered the same. Senior leader and former Union minister Ajay Maken, former Lok Sabha MP Sandeep Dixit, the entire Delhi Unit and Punjab Unit opposed any tie-up with the AAP in the public domain. The leaders claimed that Kejriwal and his team want to join the opposition camp to protect themselves from agencies like ED and CBI as they are facing corruption charges. Due to their strong opposition, the central leadership neither scheduled a meeting with the AAP supremo nor came in support against the ordinance.
Rift comes out in the open during the Patna Opposition conclave
The other blunder made by the AAP convener was during Patna meet as he left the meeting in the middle. Days before the meeting, Kejriwal put a condition that the Ordinance meeting should be discussed first else his party will skip the meeting. When the meeting was underway, Kejriwal reportedly sought one-on-one time with Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge over the issue but his request was declined.
Later it was reported that Kejriwal and his teammate Mann left the meeting which irked the opposition party leaders. The party also skipped the press conference organised by the leaders present there.
Political analysts said that Kejriwal failed to gauge the gravity of the opposition unity talks and blew out of proportion the issue of Congress's support to it in Parliament on the ordinance issue.
AAP’s hurry to support Uniform Civil Code (UCC) without having a clear picture of its draft code has also made it clear that there will be no common path for the parties in the near future.
Congress is opposed to the bill while the AAP has announced its support claiming that the code is as per the provision of the Constitution. After almost failing to reach an agreement, AAP also announced to go alone in coming elections including the next Lok Sabha elections. Its general secretary (organisatin) Sandeep Pathak, while talking to the media, said that the party will fight the election on their own.
The party’s stand is being considered a major jolt to the opposition unity for the national capital as they are eyeing to snatch all seven seats from the BJP this time.
With the Congress rebuffing AAP’s insistence on spelling out its stance on opposing the Centre’s ordinance on services in Parliament in advance, the latter seems to have made up its mind not to have any truck with the grand old party in the 2024 LS polls in the capital, writes Anup Verma