‘Alliance of the corrupt’: BJP slams Congress-AAP seat-sharing pact

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday slammed the seat-sharing pact between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, calling it an “alliance of the corrupt”.

Union minister of state for external affairs and culture Meenakshi Lekhi, who is a member of Parliament from New Delhi, said that the two parties formed the alliance so that they could place the blame on each other after they lose all seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital.

“I want to remind you of 2013, when the Aam Aadmi Party said that the Congress is a corrupt party, and that there cannot be a more corrupt party than them. (Arvind) Kejriwal even said in an interview that let alone one or two ministers, all those within the Congress are corrupt,” Lekhi said at a press conference in Delhi.

She also read out a list of “corrupt leaders” put out by Delhi chief minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal in 2014, which included then Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Union ministers Kapil Sibal, Sushilkumar Shinde, Veerappa Moily, G.K. Vasan, Salman Khurshid, Kamal Nath, Sriprakash Jaiswal, Farooq Abdullah and Sharad Pawar.

She noted that Kejriwal swore he would never ally with the Congress in 2019. “Arvind Kejriwal used to walk around with a sheaf of papers, saying that they had sufficient proof against (former Delhi CM) Sheila Dixit,” she said.

However, Lekhi also claimed that the AAP had, in fact, been propped up by the Congress, and was created in order to divide India’s anti-corruption movement. That the AAP had been allowed to use the symbol of the broom right from its electoral debut was evidence of support from the Congress and “links” between Kejriwal and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, she said.

Lekhi said that the alliance had failed to understand both the “arithmetic” and “chemistry” of politics, as even if both their vote shares in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections of Delhi were combined, it would still not overtake that of the BJP alone.

Delhi BJP president Viren Sachdeva said, “Two parties, which looted Delhi and used to be occupied in trying to prove which of them was the bigger thief, have formed an alliance today. Birds of a feather flock together”. Sachdeva also promised to take the alliance “head-on” in Delhi.

The Congress and the AAP finalised their seat-sharing plans agreeing to jointly contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, Haryana, Goa, Gujarat and Chandigarh. In Delhi, the Congress will contest the Lok Sabha seats of Chandni Chowk, North West Delhi, and North East Delhi, while the AAP will field its candidates from New Delhi, West Delhi, East Delhi, and South Delhi.

The AAP will contest in two of the 26 seats in Gujarat, and one of the 10 seats in Haryana, while the Congress will contest the rest of the seats in these states. Both the Lok Sabha seats of Goa and the one seat of Chandigarh will be contested by the Congress.

However, the INDIA Alliance partners will not be joining forces in Punjab.