New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is unlikely to go against the wishes of party leaders from Delhi and Punjab, who are not in favour of an alliance with the AAP ahead of the 2024 general elections.
Kharge, however, may meet AAP leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal though Congress is unlikely to support Kejriwal on central ordinance issue.
“The party chief may or may not meet Kejriwal but is unlikely to go against the views of the Delhi and Punjab leaders, who do not want any alliance with the AAP for the 2024 polls and are against supporting Kejriwal over a central ordinance related to control of officers in the national capital,” an AICC functionary said on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, Kharge discussed the ordinance and 2024 pact issues with senior leaders from Delhi and Punjab following a request from Kejriwal to meet the Congress chief on May 26. Kejriwal had dialed Kharge to seek his support on April 15, a day after the chief minister was summoned by the CBI in the Delhi liquor scam. The talks of having an alliance with AAP had started during the Budget Session of Parliament when AAP members used to join strategy sessions convened by Kharge in his capacity as the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha.
The Congress-led unity of 19 parties was able to exert pressure on the government as a block and assert its demand for a JPC probe into the Adani issue. Later, Kejriwal had supported the Congress after the Lok Sabha membership of Rahul Gandhi was taken away after his conviction in a defamation case.
However, the Delhi and Punjab leaders, who were directly fighting the AAP in the two states, regularly attacked Kejriwal over various issues.
Yet, the AICC took a lenient view keeping in mind the larger focus on forging an anti-BJP front ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the fact that Kejriwal was friendly with many opposition parties like TMC, BRS, NCP, Shiv Sena UBT and the CPI-M.
During the Monday meeting, former Delhi unit chief Ajay Maken strongly opposed having any truck with AAP and having any pact with the party for the 2024 national polls. The other senior Delhi leaders like JP Agarwal, Anil Chaudhary, Devender Yadav, Subhash Chopra, Arvinder Singh Lovely, Haroon Yusuf too shared Maken’s views, said the sources, adding that the Punjab leaders too expressed similar sentiments.
“There can’t be an alliance when there are differences of opinion. I am very clear on that,” former Punjab unit chief Navjot Singh Sidhu said, indicating the mood in the state where the AAP defeated the Congress in the 2022 assembly polls.
Punjab chief Amarinder Raja Warring and CLP leader Partap Singh Bajwa have been publicly opposing the AAP and backing Maken’s views.
The dominant view in the Delhi unit is that the Congress used to give a tough fight to the BJP in Delhi during the Lok Sabha polls in the past but since the emergence of the AAP in 2013, the saffron party had started getting more Lok Sabha seats in the national capital mainly due to the tacit support of the AAP, which indirectly supports the BJP and works to divide the Congress votes.
Maken had been citing the examples of Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab, Delhi and Gujarat, where the AAP worked in collusion with the BJP and dented the Congress during assembly polls.
The Delhi ordinance relates to control of the central government over appointment of officers in Delhi, the national capital territory, and has become a bone of contention between Kejriwal and the BJP-ruled Centre.
The central government brought the ordinance recently after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the Delhi government, which had been locked in a legal tussle with the Centre over who should control officers in the local administration.
The BJP hopes to pass the ordinance in the coming Monsoon Session of Parliament in July and will face no problem in getting the legislation passed in the Lok Sabha where the saffron party has a majority.
However, the legislation could be blocked by the opposition in the Rajya Sabha. To mobilize support over the issue, Kejriwal has met TMC leader and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Shiva Sena UBT leader and former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, NCP leader Sharad Pawar, BRS leader and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury.
