New Delhi: A war of words ensued between Congress president and Aam Aadmi party leaders on Monday after Rahul Gandhi offered four seats to Arvind Kejriwal's party in Delhi.
In an attempt to build pressure on AAP for a united fight against BJP, Gandhi tweeted that his party is willing to concede four Delhi seats to Kejriwal's party. "An alliance between the Congress and AAP in Delhi would mean the rout of the BJP. The Congress is willing to give up four Delhi seats to the AAP to ensure this," Rahul Gandhi said.
Accusing AAP chief and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal of doing a "U-turn" on the alliance offer. "Our doors are still open," Gandhi tweeted, opening his cards in public, while threatening that "the clock is running out". He suffixed the tweet with '#AbAAPkiBaari'.
However, Gandhi's suggested "4:3 formula", which seems to be his last, did not go down well with the Aam Aadmi Party leaders, who wondered if Congress really had the bargaining power with "0 MPs and 0 MLAs".
"In Punjab, where AAP has 4 MPs and 20 MLAs, Congress doesn't want to concede space to AAP. In Delhi, where Congress has 0 MPs and 0 MLAs, you want three seats from us? Do you not want to restrict BJP in other states?" Sanjay Singh said.
Miffed with Gandhi's "U-turn" remark, Kejriwal said that the alliance offer seems to be just a "show-off" and doesn't reflect "willingness". "Which U-turn? We are still in a conversation over the alliance. Your tweets show that the coalition is not at your will but just show-off. I am sad that you are making statements. Today, it is a pride to save our country from the dangers of Modi-Shah. Unfortunately, you are helping Modiji by distributing anti-Modi votes in UP and other states too," he said.
Another senior AAP leader, Gopal Rai, responded to Congress president's offer by publicly repeating its own offer of allying with Congress on 18 seats of Delhi. "If Rahul Gandhi has opened the door to four seats of Delhi, we have also opened doors to 18 seats in Haryana and Chandigarh to defeat BJP," he said.
Two days ago the deputy CM, Manish Sisodia, in a press conference had talked about allying in 33 seats or none.
“In last one week, meetings were held between the AAP and the Congress and we proposed an alliance on 33 seats in Delhi, Goa, Chandigarh, Haryana and Punjab seats, out of them 23 seats is with NDA.
He said a tie-up between the two parties could have caused a “damage" to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on the 23 seats.
“But the Congress purposely wasted time to take a decision on alliance and now it says it can tie up with the AAP only in Delhi. Forming an alliance in Delhi alone would not solve the problem," he said.
AAP claims to have a sizable influence in Haryana, in Punjab (where it has 4 MPs and 20 MLAs), in Goa (where it claims to have a 6% vote share), and in Chandigarh.
Five days ago senior AAP minister, Kejriwal confidante and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh, held a press conference in which it called Congress' proposal, of demading three seats in Delhi while rejecting AAP's alliance offers for Haryana and Punjab, as "impractical and wrong."
Congress, on the other hand, had set itself Monday as the cut-off date by when to take a final call on the alliance. AICC in-charge of Delhi unit PC Chacko had said that the final list of Congress' seven candidates for Delhi would be announced by Monday. Congress has already declared its candidates on four seats while AAP has declared candidates for six Lok Sabha seats in the capital.
Multiple surveys have suggested that AAP and Congress on their own may find it tough to challenge BJP's might in Delhi. However, an AAP-Congress alliance could give a tough fight to BJP in Delhi, where all its candidates overwhelmed the opposition in '14 polls.
"Three-way contest in Delhi means all 7 Lok Sabha seats to BJP, an alliance of Cong and AAP can reverse the results completely in Delhi," Sanjay Kumar of CSDS had tweeted earlier on Monday.
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