The alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress party within the I.N.D.I Alliance is full of contradictions. The alliance has completed its full circle now. It was expected since its beginning that the AAP would be created by the Congress party to cut into the vote bank of the Bharatiya Janta Party. Now the alliance between the AAP and the Congress party for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls has proved this point. If we see the political steps of the Congress Party and the AAP since the beginning, then they have indirectly supported each other.
Both parties of I.N.D.I Alliance took this decision at eleventh hour in desperation. The Congress party reached its lowest tally in 2014 LS poll of 44 seats, and even after five years of opposition, they got only 52 seats in 2019. It clearly demonstrates that the Congress Party does not even have a proper opposition role. While the tally of AAP decreased from 4 in 2014 to 1 in the 2019 LS poll, even on Sangrur LS seat the AAP lost in by-poll which was vacated by the incumbent CM Bhagwant Mann. The AAP account in the current LS was opened only after a by-poll in Jalandhar. So in Lok Sabha, in order to remain in the reckoning, these two parties come together.
After the 2013 NCT of Delhi Assembly elections, the Congress party had supported the AAP to form a government. The Congress party took this step knowing that the resurgence of AAP was a big challenge for the Congress party to deal with as the NCT Delhi government had been headed by the Congress party for 15 years. The BJP won many States like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh but the BJP did not able to win NCT of Delhi Assembly election since 1998. In 1999 LS poll the BJP won all the 7 Lok Sabha seats of th NCT of Delhi but in 2003 Delhi Assembly elections the BJP failed to dislodge the Sheila Dikshit led Congress party dispensation.
In Delhi in 2013, the Congress party and AAP realised that they could only stop the BJP from coming to power by contesting against each other and forging alliances in the post-poll scenario. They repeated the same experiment in Gujarat in 2022 Assembly election. Both the AAP and the Congress party sensed that the BJP cannot be challenged in Gujarat, so these parties forged a secret plan of contesting against the BJP separately and then apply Delhi formula in government formation. These two parties applied the similar formula for the Uttarakhand Assembly poll of 2022 but the people took lessons from the 2013 model of AAP and the Congress party and they rejected two parties vehemently. We cannot deny the fact that in 2014 Lok Sabha poll Arvind Kejriwal gone to contest against Narendra Modi at Varanasi with secret consultation with the Congress party.
Sensing that in 2024 the BJP cannot be challenged, these two parties have forged alliances even before the 2024 Lok Sabha poll. But the seat distribution of these parties is full of flaws. Chandigarh is one of the Lok Sabha seats that changed hands. Since 2004, the party won the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat has formed the government at Centre. In 2024 Lok Sabha poll the the AAP/INC/I.N.D.I Alliance is likely to put ex-Union Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal as candidate from the seat. Its’s tough for Bansal to win the seat, as BJP had defeated him by heavy margin in two successive Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and 2019. In the past, Bansal was defeated by the BJP in 1996 & 1998 Lok Sabha polls too. In 1999 LS poll Bansal won by slight margin of 5449 votes from late Krishn Lal Sharma of the BJP.
In Delhi, it is better to say there is an alliance between the Congress party and the AAP rather than the I.N.D.I Alliance, as other parties have no role in seat distribution, like Goa, Gujarat or Chandigarh. In Delhi the Congress party drew a zero tally in the last two successive Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The Congress party was on the verge of collapse in Delhi. It was getting tough for the Congress party to find suitable candidates in Delhi for Lok Sabha or Assembly elections.
Kerala and Punjab will be the two States which will be discussed in detail in TV newsroom and newspaper articles. The Communists and the Congress Party are allies in all States but in Kerala. The Congress party and the Communists share seat in Tripura and in West Bengal but they fought against each other in Kerala. So in last Assembly election in West Bengal in spite of alliance these two parties drew blank in 294 member West Bengal Assembly.
Similarly, the Congress party had forged alliances with the AAP in the entire country, but in Punjab. The AAP and the Congress Party are the two main parties in State so these two parties do not forge alliance in Punjab as they donot want to concede space to ant third party. In other states these two parties co-operate each other but will contest against each other in Punjab. The people of Punjab and of other States like Delhi, Goa and Gujarat will take lesson from West Bengal. The voters of Punjab and Kerala may follow West Bengal pattern.
