It was the year 2011. Delhi was under the rule of Congress’ stalwart leader, late Sheila Dikshit, who had been ruling the national capital for three decades. However, the so-called anti-corruption movement or Anna Andolan set the stage for the incumbent Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to dethrone the Congress from Delhi. Subsequently, Kejriwal formed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the year 2012 and his party contested the Delhi Assembly Elections 2013 which was held in December.
While the AAP’s performance was one of the best performances by a debutant political party, bagging 28 seats out of 70 it contested, the Congress was reduced to a single-digit number of eight seats. However, with AAP not crossing the majority mark, the Congress gave external support to AAP to enable it to form a government in Delhi and keep the BJP, which had notched up 32 seats, out of contention. This was the first alliance between AAP and Congress which subsequently fell apart in February 2013 when the Congress pulled out of it.
Talks for 2019 Lok Sabha polls inconclusive
Ahead of the last parliamentary elections and even before that, both parties made attempts to form an alliance but it didn’t work out. At one point in time, the AAP supremo had said that talks between the two parties for a tie-up were on for wanted to form an alliance with Congress for 33 seats in Punjab, Haryana, Goa and Delhi.
Kejriwal had said, “The situation before the nation was such that at present the priority is to stop the Modi-Shah duo. This is why we agreed to form an alliance with the Congress for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.”
Kejriwal later claimed that Congress did not agree to go together in Punjab and Goa. Everything was as per the plan and Congress leaders stopped answering calls a day before a joint press conference to announce the alliance, the party had said.
Over Rahul Gandhi’s tweet that he was ready to give four seats to AAP in Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal had said his tweet did not mean anything. "In world history, have you heard of any instance when a political alliance was formed on Twitter? Rahul Gandhi was merely pretending that he wants an alliance with AAP but in reality, he did not want to join hands with us," Kejriwal had reacted.
After the talks failed, the Congress and AAP fielded their own candidates for all seats in Delhi, Punjab, Goa and Haryana. However, both parties failed to win even a single seat in Delhi and all seven seats went to BJP. The saffron party swept all seats just like it did in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
There was another attempt to form an alliance for the Gujarat Assembly polls held in 2022 but the grand old party rejected the idea, terming AAP as a party which was opposed to Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
The party had claimed that the AAP talks about its own interests behind people’s backs, benefits and cheats. “They have removed Gandhiji’s photo from government offices in Punjab. They have insulted Gujarat and the country. Sardar Patel brought the entire country together. There will be no coalition of any type with them,” a senior Congress from Gujarat had said.
Formation of I.N.D.I.A. alliance
On July 18, 2023, 26 major political parties of the country announced the formation of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.), led by the Congress, to take on the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 general election.
The parties which formed this alliance represent 142 of 543 seats in the current Lok Sabha and 98 out of 245 seats in Rajya Sabha. They also hold 1,708 out of 4,036 seats in state legislative assemblies and 120 out of 423 seats in state legislative councils. The alliance parties are ruling 11 out of 31 states and UTs.
Since the BJP came to power at the Centre in 2014, the number of seats won or the percentage of the vote share of the Congress and AAP have more or less declined. The two parties also failed to make a dent in key states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and north-east states.
One of the major factors contributing to the BJP’s winning streak in various elections was division of votes among the opposition parties. While the BJP received 31% of the vote share and won 282 seats in the 2014 general elections, the Congress and AAP got 44 seats and four seats with a vote share of 19.31% and 2.05% respectively. In the 2019 polls, the BJP won 303 seats and amassed more than one-third (37.76%) of the vote share while the Congress and the AAP registered 19.4% and 0.44% of the vote share and got 52 seats and one seat respectively.
Plan to claw way back to a position of strength
Ahead of the 2024 general election, the Congress and AAP seem to be seriously considering having a political tie-up to try and bag the maximum seats in the national capital. In both the preceding elections held in 2014 and 2019, the two parties got zero seats.
While BJP’s vote share was 46.40% for the seven Lok Sabha constituencies in Delhi in 2014, the vote share of the Congress and the AAP was 15.10% and 32.90% respectively. BJP’s vote share went up by almost 10% in the 2019 general election compared to 2014, while that of the Congress and AAP was recorded at 22.51% and 14.79% respectively.
The Congress has also been faring poorly in the Delhi Assembly elections since 2013. While it got eight seats in 2013, the tally was zero in 2015 and 2020. The vote share recorded for AAP, BJP and Congress for Delhi Assembly elections in the year 2013 was 29.5%, 33% and 24.6% respectively. However, the vote share for AAP, BJP and Congress in the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections was 54.3%, 32.3% and 9.7% respectively.
The Congress lost almost 15% of the vote share from the previous elections. The results of the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections were a nightmare for Congress. The vote share of the national party was reduced to 4.26% while BJP registered a growth of more than five per cent from the previous one.
The Congress also fared poorly in the election for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, having just nine councillors out of 250. While BJP recorded a vote share of 39.09% in MCD polls, AAP got a 42.0% vote share compared to 9.41% recorded in favour of the Congress.
Considering that the Congress was once ruling more than half of the states and UTs in the country, it has now been reduced to an also-ran. The above facts and figures clearly indicate why both the Congress and the AAP are considering stitching up a national-level alliance.
Situation fluid due to flip-flops
There have been lots of episodes and incidents where both parties were seen opposing each other and thus the 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, has in the past alleged that the AAP is a ‘B-team’ of BJP as it has supported the stand of the saffron party in and outside Parliament. Congress leaders also allege that the AAP helps BJP win in many state elections by fielding its candidates to ensure the division of opposition votes.
The AAP’s hurry to come out in support of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), without having a clear picture of the draft of the code has also made it clear that there will be no common path for both parties in the near future. The Congress, in principle, has been opposing the bill since the beginning while the AAP announced its support claiming that the code is as per the provision of the Constitution.
Moreover, while the AAP and Congress may come together in a few states, in Punjab, the AAP has announced its intention to go solo. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has gone on the record to say that the AAP knows how to contest elections alone, win it and form government. The AAP also recently released the first list of 10 candidates for Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections which are due to be held at the end of the year.
Bypoll results a boost for the Opposition front
The results of the recently held by-polls for Assembly seats in seven constituencies have boosted the morale of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc ahead of the 2024 election. it won four out of seven seats while three went to the BJP. The alliance won Kerala’s Puthuppally, Jharkhand’s Dumri, West Bengal’s Dhupguri and Uttar Pradesh’s Ghosi. After the bypoll results were declared, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and cabinet minister Atishi applauded the performance of the I.N.D.I.A alliance
Kejriwal took to X (formerly Twitter) and stated that the newly-formed alliance was powerful, and the BJP was now in a state of panic. Delhi education minister Atishi also posted on X: “Sign of times to come?”
Another significant development for the city’s political landscape has been the appointment of former Delhi minister Arvinder Singh Lovely as the president of DPCC. Lovely, in contrast to some leaders of the city Congress unit, has not been vocal against the AAP.