Congress, AAP Haryana seat negotiations in final phase
With only four days left to file nominations, the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, both constituents of INDIA bloc, are learnt to have entered the final phase of negotiations for the October 5 Haryana Assembly elections, their focus now on seat allocation.
Sources said AAP was interested in contesting Kalayat, Pehowa, Guhla (SC) and Jind seats, and a couple of other urban constituencies.
Congress picks nine more
The Congress has named nine more candidates for Haryana, fielding Brijendra Singh from Uchana Kalan and Mohit Grover from Gurugram. The other candidates are Ashok Arora (Thanesar), Kuldeep Sharma (Ganaur), Paramvir Singh (Tohana), Anirudh Chaudhary (Tosham), Balram Dangi (Meham), Manju Choudhary (Nangal Chaudhary) and Vardhan Yadav (Badshahpur).
Hopefully some good news soon: Chadha
- AAP leader Raghav Chadha on Sunday said some good news on AAP and Congress alliance was likely soon.
- Chadha said, “Talks are going on in a positive environment. Good discussions are underway. I am hopeful that some good conclusion will definitely come out of the talks in the interest of Haryana.”
- “I cannot share the figures with you all. Whether it is a statement by a leader of another party, or a statement by a leader of my party, or a matter of an individual seat, I will not comment on any person or seat. Hopefully, soon we will all come back and give some good news,” said Chadha.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections for Haryana’s 10 segments, the Congress had given AAP the Kurukshetra seat. Dr Sushil Gupta of AAP, however, lost to BJP’s Naveen Jindal by a margin of 29,021 votes, with AAP securing 3.94 per cent of the vote share.
AAP led in four of the nine Assembly seats under the Kurukshetra parliamentary constituency: Kalayat and Guhla (SC) in Kaithal district, and Pehowa and Shahbad (SC) in Kurukshetra. AAP’s highest lead of 14,437 votes was from Kalayat. Sources said AAP is also staking claim to Kalayat as the Congress has lost the seat three times in a row in 2009, 2014 and 2019.
In Guhla, AAP had a lead of 8,055 votes. Sitting Guhla MLA Ishwar Singh recently switched from the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) to the Congress, which has complicated the situation for the grand old party.
In Pehowa (Congress lost it in 2014 and 2019), AAP led by 879 votes. Kalayat, Guhla and Pehowa share their boundaries with Punjab, where AAP is in power.
From Shahbad, AAP had secured a lead of 11,657 votes. The Congress, however, has already announced sitting JJP MLA Ram Karan Kala as its candidate from here. AAP is also staking a claim to the Jind seat, which the Congress has lost four times consecutively.
AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha, who is leading the negotiations with the Congress, said both parties had a “desire, wish and hope for an alliance”. “We will decide before September 12 (deadline for nominations). If we don’t agree or if there is no win-win situation, we will leave it,” he said.
Taking a jibe at the Congress-AAP alliance talks, former Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said it was clear that the Congress had “accepted defeat”. “That’s why it’s going in for an alliance. We had also allied under compulsion. A tie-up implies it’s unable to move forward on its own,” said former CM Khattar.
