INDI Crack Deepens: AAP to Contest All 13 LS Seats in Punjab, No Alliance With Cong, Says Kejriwal

Chandigarh: In another big setback for the INDI Alliance, the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has confirmed that it will contest all 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab as well as the Chandigarh seat. AAP party chief and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal announced the decision Saturday.

“Two years ago, you had blessed us with 92 out of 117 seats (in Assembly elections). You had scripted history. Today, with folded hands, I seek your blessings again. In another two months, Lok Sabha elections will be held. Punjab has 13 Lok Sabha seats, and one seat in Chandigarh. In all, there are 14 seats. In the coming 10-15 days, the AAP will declare candidates for all the 14 Lok Sabha seats. I request you to bless us in the same manner you had done two years ago. Make AAP win in all 14 seats,” Kejriwal said at a rally in Khanna, Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab.

In his appeal to the voters, the AAP convenor hit out at the Congress, his INDI coalition partner.

“In the past 75 years, Congress ruled for so many years. If I ask you to tell me one good work that the Congress has done, you will struggle to remember. Akali Dal ruled for so many years. If I ask you to tell me one good work of the Akalis, you will not remember. If I ask you what good work has CM Bhagwant Mann done in the past two years, you will tell me that he has made electricity free and it is available 24 hours a day which they could not do in 75 years,” he said.

On February 13, the Political Affairs Committee of AAP, the party’s highest decision-making body,  will meet to finalise candidates for Goa, Gujarat and Haryana. AAP has already unilaterally declared one candidate, Chaitar Vasava, from Gujarat’s Bharuch Lok Sabha constituency.

Earlier, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had declared that AAP would contest all 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab. "The Aam Aadmi Party has shortlisted 40 candidates for the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab. We are getting a survey done before finalising candidates," Bhagwant Mann had said, adding, “We discussed with the party's high command for the candidates. Punjab banega hero in Lok Sabha, it would be 13-0.” Mann said almost 40 candidates showed their interest in the Lok Sabha elections.

Structure of INDI Alliance Crumbling: BJP

Reacting to AAP's decision, BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said that the "structure of the INDI Alliance is crumbling".

"No mission, no vision, only commission, only corruption, only confusion, only contradiction. Rahul Gandhi's Nyay Yatra is strange. It is more of 'bye bye yatra' than Nyay Yatra. He should have taken out 'INDI jodo yatra' instead," he said.