Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress failed to reach a consensus on seat-sharing for the upcoming Haryana Assembly election.
The parties, which are part of the opposition INDIA bloc at the national level, likely to contest Haryana elections at its own.
Both the parties failed to strike out seat-sharing formula. The AAP wanted to contest on at least 10 seats, but the Congress wasn’t willing to spare more than three for the Arvind Kejriwal-led party.
The fissures were seen minutes after the AAP released a first list of 20 hopefuls, including naming 11 to jostle for seats to which the Congress has named candidates. A second list will be “released soon”, AAP state unit chief Sushil Gupta said.
“AAP has made its decision.. we have gone ahead and announced candidates for 20 seats (with a) further list to come as well. We are confident about our outcome on all 90 seats…” he said.
“We clearly want to come together with the Congress to isolate and defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party, but what can we do if the Congress does not want to do so?” AAP leader said.
The two parties had reached an ‘in-principle’ deal to re-form the alliance that stopped the BJP from sweeping Haryana’s 10 Lok Sabha seats for a second straight election.
But working out a seat-share deal proved difficult; the AAP wanted 10 seats but the Congress was only willing to concede seven, pointing out its ally had failed to win the seat allotted to it – Kurukshetra, won by the BJP – in the general election. The Congress contested the other nine and won five.
