india

Updated: Feb 21, 2019 16:37 IST

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said the Congress has refused to have an alliance with his Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi for the Lok Sabha elections. He claimed if the Congress agrees to the alliance offer, the Bharatiya Janata Party will lose all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi.

“Tired of trying to convince Congress for alliance but they refuse to understand…If today our alliance with Congress is done, the BJP will lose all seven seats in Delhi,” news agency ANI quoted Kejriwal as saying at a public function in Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency.

Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit didn’t agree with Kejriwal and said has never talked about an alliance. “I want to ask Arvind Kejriwal on what basis has he said this? Because he has not talked about it even once,” Dikshit was quoted as saying by ANI.

Kejriwal had said there should be only one candidate against every BJP candidate so thet votes aren’t divided. The BJP had won all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in 2014 parliamentary polls.

Earlier this month, the AAP convener had said the Congress has “more or less” ruled out an alliance with the party for the Lok Sabha polls expected to be held in April-May this year. Kejriwal made this comment a day after he and Congress president Rahul Gandhi participated in a meeting of opposition leaders at Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar’s residence in Delhi.

The AAP has been calling for an alliance with the Congress, which has preferred to remain non-committal to offer. The Congress has, on the other hand, maintained that its priority is to strengthen its organisation in Delhi, where it had government for three successive terms between 1998 and 2013, when Kejriwal-led AAP defeated the party.

The 2013 Delhi election in Delhi resulted in a hung assembly. The single-largest party, the BJP, refused to stake claim to power and the AAP formed government with the outside support from the Congress. The government fell after 49 days. When the Lok Sabha polls were held in 2014, Delhi was under the central rule. In 2015, AAP won 67 of 70 seats in Delhi assembly election to form government in the national capital.