Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann said AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal asked him to actively campaign for all INDIA bloc candidates. | Photo Credit: File Photo
Senior leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress on Tuesday held their first campaign strategy meeting after announcing their alliance in Delhi in February this year. As part of their seat-sharing arrangement, AAP is fighting on four seats, while Congress is contesting on the other three. Voting for Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats is scheduled for May 25. AAP and Congress have also joined forces in Haryana, where they are fighting on one and nine seats, respectively.
A senior Delhi Congress leader said both parties had agreed to finalise a joint poll road map over the next two days. The leaders also agreed to meet regularly to take stock of the ground situation and “fully activate ground-level workers to defeat the BJP in all seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi and 10 seats of Haryana”.
Leaders who attended the meeting included Deepak Babaria, All India Congress Committee general secretary and party in-charge of Delhi and Haryana; Sandeep Pathak, AAP’s general secretary (organisation); and Devender Yadav, newly appointed Delhi Congress interim chief. Sources said the prospects of the candidates in Delhi and Haryana were discussed at the meeting.
The meeting comes two days after former Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely, in his resignation letter, said local party workers were not in favour of a tie-up with AAP, which, he said, was “formed on the sole basis of levelling fabricated corruption charges against the Congress party”.
‘Campaign actively’
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann met his Delhi counterpart and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal in Tihar Jail on Tuesday. This was Mr. Mann’s second visit to see the jailed Delhi CM in a fortnight. Speaking to mediapersons after his visit, Mr. Mann said the AAP chief had asked him to actively campaign for all Indian National Developmental, Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc candidates in the general election. “He told me that wherever there is an INDIA bloc programme, be it in Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra, U.P. or Bihar, our leaders must attend it,” Mr. Mann added.
Meanwhile, senior AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj on Tuesday said the party’s Rajya Sabha member Raghav Chadha will join the election campaign as soon as he recovers from an eye operation.
“It is said that his [Mr. Chadha’s] condition was serious and there was a possibility of blindness. As soon as he gets better, he will come back to India and join us,” Mr. Bharadwaj told a news agency.
