Congress and AAP Reached A Seat Sharing Formula For Delhi and 3 Other States
The Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) announced a seat-sharing formula during a joint press conference ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The parties, both are Opposition INDIA alliance members, have announced the deal for Delhi, Chandigarh, Goa, Gujarat, and Haryana.
Both the national parties have agreed to a 4:3 seat-sharing formula for Delhi under a joint fight in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. In Delhi, the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP party will contest for 4 seats out of the seven seats in West Delhi, South Delhi, East Delhi and New Delhi. Congress will contest for the remaining 3 seats in North East Delhi, North West Delhi, and Chandni Chowk. Notably, both in the 2014 and 2019 elections, BJP won all 7 seats with a vote share exceeding 50 percent.
In Gujarat, AAP will contest from two seats in Bharuch and Bhavnagar and one in Kurukshetra in Haryana. Whereupon, Congress will contest in both the seats in Goa and the sole constituency in Chandigarh. However, AAP had already declared its candidate from South Goa but now will withdraw considering the seat-sharing formula.
Congress has also made a deal with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in UP where the party will contest 17 seats for Lok Sabha elections.
However, according to reports, no such deal has been struck in Maharashtra between Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) and Sharadchandra Pawar-led NCP. Reportedly, the Congress aims to contest three of Mumbai’s six Lok Sabha seats – Mumbai South Central, Mumbai North Central, and Mumbai North West. On the other hand, Uddhav Thackeray seeks to contest 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state, including four in Mumbai – Mumbai South, Mumbai North West, Mumbai North East, and Mumbai South Central.
Similarly, talks are underway in West Bengal, as Trinamool is not ready to provide more than two seats to the Congress. Whereas, Congress is asking for at least five seats out of the total 42. This shift comes a month after TMC chief Mamata Banerjee announced that her party will fight the Lok Sabha polls alone.
INDIA bloc has seen major seat-sharing negotiations due to the aspiration of the regional parties and analysts and observes said the reason behind this is the recent electoral setbacks of Congress in the 3 heartland states.
Meanwhile, two important members of the INDIA alliance, which was formed to oppose the BJP last year, have already left: Jayant Chaudhary”s Rashtriya Lok Dal in UP and Nitish Kumar”s Janata Dal-United in Bihar. They both have joined the BJP-led NDA.
