2024 LS polls: AAP offers one seat to Congress, says party wants to contest six seats in Delhi
NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday said it wants to contest six seats in Delhi in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and offer just one to the Congress.
The party asserted that the Congress, which is the senior INDIA bloc ally, does not even deserve one seat considering its performance in the previous polls in the national capital.
Addressing a press conference here after the AAP's political affairs committee meeting, the party's national general secretary (organisation), Sandeep Pathak, said they have been waiting for more than a month for the seat sharing talks to resume for Delhi but there has been no communication (from the Congress).
"There have been two official meetings between Congress and AAP on January 8 and January 12. The talks happened in a good atmosphere but there were no results.
"Following these two official meetings, there has been no meeting in the last month. We were told that Congress party's (Bharat Jodo Nyay) Yatra is going on and there will be a delay. We got to meet senior Congress leaders during this but even they had no idea," he said.
The AAP and the Congress have already announced that they will go solo in Punjab in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls since their state leaders have been opposed to forging any alliance in the state.
As seat sharing talks have not been held regarding Delhi for over a month, Pathak said he was "sitting with a heavy heart."
"These things would not have been necessary if there would have been talks," he added.
Announcing the seat-sharing proposal from the AAP, he said they plan to contest six out of seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi and offer one to the Congress.
"Congress has zero seats in the Lok Sabha and zero seats in the assembly. In the MCD elections last year, Congress won nine wards out of 250. If you see on a merit basis and on statistics, Congress does not deserve one seat. But keeping in mind the alliance dharma, we offer them one seat," he added.
He said if talks do not happen, they will announce the names of six candidates for Delhi in the next few days.
The BJP had won all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, AAP's vote share was 18.1 percent, and it had bagged the third spot, while the Congress had polled 22.5 percent of the votes and was second on five of the seven Lok Sabha seats. The BJP had secured a vote share of 56.5 percent.