New Delhi:
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday blamed Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal for the failed alliance between their parties in Delhi for the Lok Sabha Elections 2019 and said that the AAP chief took a "U-turn" from an agreed position and wanted a tie-up beyond the national capital.
"I clearly told Kejriwal ji that we have to win all seven seats in Delhi. You contest on four seats and we will contest on three. First, he agreed. Even I concurred with the proposal. But then he brought in talks on Haryana and Punjab. Then he took a U-turn," Gandhi said.
Gandhi was addressing a rally in the Chandni Chowk constituency where he asserted that only the Congress could stop Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP and the RSS. He asserted that the Congress is the only party in the last five years to fight Modi across the country. He accused Kejriwal of "opening the doors" for BJP's victory in 2014 by spreading "lies" about the Congress. "The BJP alone did not spread lies about the Congress," Gandhi said.
"It is you who has to understand this. In Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Karnataka...wherever Narendra Modi went, the Congress party defeated him. I will not allow Narendra Modi, BJP and the RSS to move ahead even by an inch," he said. The Congress president said that even in Parliament, the party MPs battled the BJP.
The AAP and the Congress have been at loggerheads ever since their alliance to fight the BJP failed. While the AAP was not ready to have a tie-up in Delhi alone, the Congress was reluctant to have an alliance beyond the national capital. The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP has proposed to give two seats to Congress which has instead demanded three - New Delhi, Chandni Chowk and North East Delhi, sources in both the parties claimed. The rationale behind an alliance between the two parties is that together they polled more votes than the BJP which swept the 2014 Lok Sabha elections winning all the seven seats in Delhi.
