Congress ‘nearly said no’ to alliance prospects says Kejriwal after meeting with opposition leaders

After a late-night meeting with opposition leaders Mamata Banerjee and Rahul Gandhi among others at Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar’s home last evening, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal spoke to the media today stating that the Congress party had ‘nearly said no’ to an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

The AAP and the Congress party have shared a chequered relationship in the past since the former was born out of an anti-corruption movement pioneered by Anna Hazare that targeted the Delhi Congress government led by chief minister Sheila Dixit.

In the last assembly elections of 2015, the AAP had swept all the seats while the Congress party had failed miserably.

To unite the opposition into a pre-poll alliance, opposition leaders like Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) head MK Stalin, Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and NCP chief Sharad Pawar have expressed interest in joining forces against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies for the coming Lok Sabha elections.

However, Congress president Rahul Gandhi has maintained that the parties will ‘compete’ with each other on a regional level. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has also stated that the question of forming an alliance ‘has not been decided yet’ in Delhi and Bengal. The Congress party is currently a part of the opposition both in Delhi and Bengal.

The absence of an alliance could affect the unity agenda and have a bearing on the poll results, feel some of the opposition leaders.