Lok Sabha elections 2019: All is not well with the Congress as uncertainty persists over a pre-poll tie-up with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit and her three working presidents wrote to party chief Rahul Gandhi asking him to not go forward with the alliance, new agency PTI reported.
In the letter, Dikshit and working presidents Haroon Yusuf, Devender Yadav and Rajesh Lilothia expressed their displeasure at a survey to gauge the opinion of Delhi Congress workers on the alliance with AAP. The phone survey had sought views of 52,000 Congress workers in Delhi.
But while Sheila Dikshit has strongly opposed a tie-up with AAP, another senior party leader, PC Chacko, said that most leaders in the Delhi Congress unit were in favour of having the alliance, and he had passed on these opinions to Rahul Gandhi.
Chacko said some senior leaders in Delhi think defeating BJP is the party’s immediate responsibility and for which an alliance should be forged with AAP.
Earlier this week, AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal had said that the party was confident of winning all seven seats in the national capital and hence would be going alone. AAP has already named candidates for six Delhi Lok Sabha seats.
The Lok Sabha election is slated to be held on May 12 in Delhi.
Days after having unanimously decided to go it alone in Delhi, Rahul Gandhi is still mulling on the alliance and is expected to take a decision soon. The Delhi unit will work on the seat-sharing calculation after that.
Congress’s screening committee will submit a list of shortlisted candidates to Rahul Gandhi. “Polls in Delhi are quite late. Before that, the party has to finalise names in other states,”, a Congress leader told the Indian Express.