New Delhi: The 18 months old INDIA bloc, whose leaders had first met in Patna in June 2023 to give the bloc a formal shape, suffered a major blow on Thursday after one of the key constituents of the bloc, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) gave a 24 hours ultimatum to the Congress party to either take strict action against senior party leader Ajay Maken or the AAP will ask the other INDIA bloc parties to remove the Congress from the alliance.
Maken, treasurer of the All India Congress Committee, and widely seen as one of the Congress CM candidates in case the party comes to power, while releasing a ‘white paper’ on the Black Deeds of both AAP government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central government.
Congress sources told this newspaper that the question of taking any action against Maken ‘does not arises’ and AAP is free to do what it deems good for itself.
The INDIA bloc is already under strain over leadership questions with non-Congress members asking the leadership of the alliance to be given to TMC chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee.
Maken in his press conference had stated that the grand old party’s decision to support the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in 2013 led to the Congress’ decline in Delhi. He also spoke against the ‘repeated mistake’ of aligning with the AAP including in the Lok Sabha elections 2024.
Maken criticised Arvind Kejriwal, saying his party came to power riding on the anti-corruption agitation and failed to set up Jan Lokpal in Punjab where the AAP is in government. “If there is one word to describe former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal here then it would be ‘Farziwal’ while alleging that that money was spent on renovating the Chief Minister’s official residence by the AAP and constructing the Central Vista by the Centre during the COVID-19 pandemic when common people were suffering and went on to call Kejriwal an “anti-national” who is in “ideological” support of the BJP on issues such as the Uniform Civil Code, abrogation of Article 370 and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
On Thursday a visibly upset AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh and Delhi CM Atishi, launched a no hold barred political attack on the Congress claiming that the Congress was doing “everything to help BJP win Delhi polls” while adding that Ajay Maken “reads BJP’s script”.
CM Atishi alleged that AAP has found through credible sources that Congress candidates’ election expenditure is being funded by the BJP. “We have heard that Sandeep Dikshit is getting funded by BJP,” Atishi alleged. Dikshit is contesting against Kejriwal from Delhi.
While the upcoming Delhi assembly elections, scheduled for February, is being seen as a fight between the ruling AAP and the BJP, Congress is hoping that it will get a respectable number of seats in wake of the anti-incumbency against the AAP leaders and the lack of a strong CM face in the BJP.
Shivam Bhagat, Congress Delhi spokesperson, termed the AAP leaders as ‘inefficient’ and ‘corrupt clowns’ while questioning how a party with three Lok Sabha MPs will get the Congress removed from the INDIA bloc. Congress with 99 Lok Sabha MPs is the biggest member of the INDIA bloc.
While the AAP has been able to develop a second line of leaders to support Kejriwal, like Atishi, Singh, Manish Sisodia and others who are seen as popular faces among the electorate, the BJP does not have any local leaders who can be counted as equal to them.
Maken, an old Delhi hand, knows that Congress can only secure a respectable number of seats in Delhi if it convinces voters to stop supporting AAP leaders. The traditional Congress vote bank, which has largely shifted to AAP, must return to Congress for the party to regain relevance. Without this support, Delhi Congress will continue to lose ground in every election.