Lok Sabha Elections 2019: AAP wants 3 seats in Punjab, Congress willing to concede just Sangrur

A senior Congress leader said the party is willing to concede just one parliamentary seat, Sangrur, to AAP. The party does not have a formidable contender there and the AAP needs the seat to field its state president Bhagwant Mann.

The Congress is making no bones about not wanting a pact with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab, even as the two parties are believed to have renewed their efforts to forge an alliance at the national level.

File photo of AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal and party MP Bhagwant Mann during a rally in Barnala. The party is trying for a seat-sharing pact with Congress in Punjab for the Lok Sabha elections and is learnt to be angling for three seats. (PTI File Photo)

If it goes for a coalition with the Arvind Kejriwal-led outfit at all, the ruling party in the state wants to do so on its own terms.

A senior Congress leader said the party is willing to concede just one parliamentary seat, Sangrur, to AAP. The party does not have a formidable contender there and the AAP needs the seat to field its state president Bhagwant Mann. The AAP, sources said, is learnt to be angling for three seats, including Anandpur Sahib and Faridkot represented by its sitting MP Sadhu Singh. However, after a massive mandate in the assembly polls, the Congress is not ready to part with either Anandpur Sahib or Faridkot, though it had lost both the seats in the 2014 general elections.

Both chief minister Amarinder Singh and state party president Sunil Jakhar have launched the ‘Mission-13’ campaign with claims to win all 13 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Ruling out need for a pact with AAP, Amarinder says the party (AAP) has “lost considerable ground after it took the state by storm”. But all statements of Amarinder and Jakhar come with a disclaimer — that the party high command will take the final call on national-level alliances.

Leader of opposition in state assembly Harpal Singh Cheema says they have told the AAP top bosses in Delhi that the Congress is on the downswing in Punjab and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has lost its moorings. “The AAP does not need an alliance with the Congress in Punjab. The voters are asking what has the party done in the last two years in power,” Cheema said.

The AAP has been playing hardball too. It has been in talks with SAD (Taksali), the breakaway faction of the Akali Dal, but did not seal a deal as the option of going with the Congress is still not over. Having already announced the name of its candidate Narinder Singh Shergill from the Anandpur Sahib seat, the AAP last week called off its talks with Taksalis. The latter has announced former Congress MLA and ex-Vidhan Sabha deputy speaker Bir Devinder Singh from Anandpur Sahib, and refused to budge too.

Sukhpal Singh Khaira, chief of Punjab Ekta Party (PEP), had taken a dig at his former party saying Shergill was the moneybag and financer of the AAP. The seat also became the bone of contention between Taksalis and Khaira-led Punjab Democratic Alliance (PDA), which has already announced Vikram Singh Sodhi of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as its candidate.