Ahmedabad:
The Congress-Aam Aadmi Party tie-up in Gujarat hopes to challenge the electoral hegemony of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, while the ruling party is confident that the opposition alliance will not affect its prospects.
The Congress-AAP alliance this time aims to fight a tough fight to prevent the anti-BJP vote from splitting.
In the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won all 26 parliamentary seats in Gujarat, home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, in both houses. Received more than 60% of the vote.
In the 2022 Gujarat assembly elections, the Congress and Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP contested separately, resulting in a split in the opposition vote and a huge victory for the BJP, which won 156 seats out of 182 in the state. .
The BJP got about 51% of the votes, the Congress got 27.5% of the votes and 17 seats, while the AAP got about 13% of the votes and 5 seats.
A senior state Congress leader admitted that they lost over 40 assembly seats due to vote sharing between the old party and the AAP.
Notably, four Congress MLAs and one AAP MLA from the state have resigned in the last four months.
All 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat will go to single-phase polling on May 7 and counting of votes will take place on June 4.
As per the seat-sharing agreement, the Congress will contest in 24 seats, while the AAP will field candidates in two seats – Bharuch and Bhavnagar.
“We believe that after ten years of BJP misrule in Gujarat, people will give other parties a chance,” said Manoj Sorathiya, leader of the state’s AAP.
AAP convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, during his recent visit to Vadodara, appealed to the people to give the party’s two candidates a chance this time.
“The MPs you fielded from here cannot handle any of your issues as they are from the ruling party. They just go to Delhi (Parliament) Lok Sabha but cannot raise your issues. Give the AAP candidates a chance and they will be fine.” There will never be a day when the issue of Gujarat is not raised in Delhi. “Gujarat Congress is also optimistic about cooperation with AAP,” Kejriwal said while addressing a meeting.
“The alliance will prevent anti-BJP vote splitting. We all know that the Congress lost over 40 seats in the 2022 state assembly elections due to vote splitting between AAP and Congress,” Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said.
“The alliance will be able to give a tough fight against the ruling party in Gujarat. Gujarat is a very important state,” he said.
The BJP, however, expressed confidence that the opposition alliance would not affect the party’s poll prospects in the state.
Gujarat BJP president CR Patil said the Congress-AAP alliance will not affect the party’s prospects as the party has secured more than 50 per cent of the votes in the past few elections.
Political experts believe that the Congress-AAP alliance will definitely prevent vote splitting but will not be able to challenge the BJP in Prime Minister Modi’s home state.
“The alliance will help the opposition consolidate anti-BJP votes. As the two parties come together, anti-BJP votes will definitely flow to the opposition Indian Alliance, unlike what happened in the last assembly elections,” Rajkot Political Analysis Dr. Suresh Samani said.
“However, the Modi factor is crucial in the state. It is the Prime Minister’s home state. It seems that the (Congress-AAP) alliance will not be able to challenge the dominance of the BJP, which got over 60 per cent in the election of votes. The last two Lok Sabha polls,” Samani added. PTI PD GK
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
