NEW DELHI: State Congress chief Devender Yadav on Friday said the party would go solo in the Delhi assembly polls and ruled out any possibility of an alliance with Aam Aadmi Party, adding that the party had started collecting feedback on prospective candidates.
AAP had made it clear after the Lok Sabha polls that the alliance with Congress was limited to the general elections. After the Haryana polls, it had reiterated its decision to go solo.
“A decision on going solo was taken after the Lok Sabha results and the official position of the party is even now very clear that we will fight on all 70 seats by ourselves and there will be no alliance,” Yadav told TOI. He said the decision to go solo stemmed from lessons learnt from the Lok Sabha results where AAP and Congress had decided to fight on four and three seats respectively. The alliance lost all seven seats to BJP.
“We would have fared better and even won a seat or two if we had not allied with AAP. Also, our Nyay Yatras across constituencies show that there is intense anti-incumbency against AAP. Why should we take on the weight of the ruling party’s anti-incumbency by even exploring an alliance. Congress is better off going into the fight on all 70 seats on its own and that is what we are doing,” Yadav said.
Congress is planning a show of strength at the conclusion of its Nyay Yatra after it completes the outreach in all 70 seats by Dec 6. Senior party leaders are expected to join the programme.
“We have started the process of shortlisting candidates at the district level and collecting feedback from our leaders. We will be reviving our state level election committee soon to shortlist candidates,” Yadav said. The shortlisted names will be sent to the central screening committee.
On Nov 24, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge had approved constitution of the screening committee. The panel includes former MP from Mandsaur Meenakshi Natarajan as chairperson and two members — Lok Sabha MP from Saharanpur Imran Masood and AICC national secretary Pradeep Narwal. The AICC in-charge, pradesh Congress president and all AICC secretaries in-charge of Delhi are ex-officio members of the screening committee.
