The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has announced that it will independently contest the upcoming Haryana assembly election next month and will soon release its complete list of candidates. The decision follows unsuccessful negotiations with the Congress party over seat-sharing arrangements. After waiting for a response from Congress, AAP has decided to proceed solo.
Haryana’s assembly election will take place on October 5, with the results to be counted on October 8.
Sushil Gupta, the AAP state chief, confirmed that the Haryana unit has finalised its list of candidates for all 90 assembly seats. He mentioned that no definitive response has been received from the party leadership regarding a potential alliance with Congress.
“As AAP Haryana chief, I’m preparing for the 90 assembly seats. We haven’t received news about the alliance from the high command. If we don’t receive news today, we’ll release our list for all 90 seats by evening,” Gupta stated.
AAP MP Sanjay Singh also expressed the party’s readiness to go solo in Haryana and indicated that the candidate list would be released once approval is received from the party leadership.
The negotiations between Congress and Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP reached an impasse due to disagreements over seat allocation. AAP had requested 10 seats, while Congress offered only seven, citing a poor performance by AAP in the Lok Sabha election, specifically in Kurukshetra where BJP’s Naveen Jindal won. AAP’s insistence on key Assembly seats, including Kalayat and at least one seat in Kurukshetra, as well as seats in former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s stronghold, further complicated the talks.
Although an ‘in-principle’ agreement was reached to join forces against the BJP, AAP’s less impressive Lok Sabha performance gave Congress leverage in the seat-sharing discussions. Concerns were also raised by state leaders regarding an alliance with Kejriwal’s party in a state which Congress seems confident of winning.
AAP MP Raghav Chadha, who led the discussions for AAP, was hopeful of a positive outcome.
In the meantime, Congress has announced its second list of nine candidates for the Haryana assembly elections, bringing the total number of declared candidates to 41 out of 90 Assembly seats.
