New Delhi: State Congress chief Dender Yadav on Friday said the party will contest the Delhi assembly elections alone and ruled out any possibility of an alliance with the party am admi partyadding that the party has begun collecting feedback on potential candidates.
AAP made it clear after the Lok Sabha polls that its alliance with the Congress would be limited to general elections. It reiterated its decision to go it alone after the Haryana polls.
Yadav told TOI: “After the Lok Sabha election results, we took the decision to go alone and the party’s official position is now very clear that we will contest all 70 seats alone and there will be no alliance. He said the decision to go alone stemmed from lessons learned from the Lok Sabha election results, when the AAP and Congress decided to contest four and three seats respectively. The alliance lost all seven seats to the BJP.
“Had we not formed an alliance with AAP, we would have performed better and even won one or two seats. Moreover, our Nyay Yatras across constituencies show that there is a strong anti-incumbency Against AAP. Why should we shoulder the burden of the ruling party’s anti-incumbency through the Exploration Alliance? It would be better for the Congress to contest all 70 seats itself and that is what we are doing,” Yadav said.
Congress is planning a show of strength as its session ends Nyayatra Senior party leaders are expected to join the program once outreach to all 70 seats is completed by December 6.
“We have already started shortlisting candidates at the district level and collecting feedback from leaders. We will soon resume the state-level election committees to select candidates. The shortlist will be sent to the central evaluation committee.
Congress president Mallikarjun Haq approved the constitution of the screening committee on November 24. The panel includes former MP Mandsaur Meenakshi Natarajan as chairperson and two members – Lok Sabha MP Imran Masood of Saharanpur and AICC national secretary Pradeep Narwal. The AICC chief, state Congress president and all AICC secretaries in Delhi are ex-officio members of the screening committee.
