Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, has reportedly suggested that the Congress should ally with the Aam Aadmi Party in Haryana for the ensuing assembly elections. This suggests that the party is nervous about taking on the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state on its own.
Much against the perception being created by the Congress that the odds were in its favour in Haryana, the interest shown by the party in alliance with the AAP has not conveyed a positive message across the state, particularly among its cadres. In electoral politics, messaging is very important. Showing an interest in an alliance only reveals the lack of confidence of the party.
AAP and Congress were together in LS 2024 Elections
The AAP is fighting to establish a foothold in the state that almost completely encircles Delhi, where it has been in power for the last 12 years.
The Congress and the AAP fought the parliamentary elections together. AAP contested the Kurukshetra seat, which it lost, while the Congress contested nine others and won five. The AAP led in four of the nine assembly segments falling in the Kurukshetra parliamentary constituency.
This time, AAP may be offered 6 seats bordering Punjab.
That time it was made categorically clear that the alliance was only for the Lok Sabha polls.
Most of the Congress leaders in the state do not favour an alliance with the AAP. This, they feel, will unnecessarily lead to providing “the Congress space” to the AAP.
The party leaders believe that the AAP was never in a position to benefit Congress in any way, in any of the 90 seats.
However, the central leadership is understood to be under the impression that AAP has some influence in certain pockets, particularly those segments bordering Punjab, which AAP swept massively in 2022. In these segments, the leadership believes, AAP can cause a substantial dent in the Congress support base if it contests separately.
This, however, may not hold now. The AAP is no longer as strong today as it was in 2022 in Punjab.
Rather, it remains a pale shadow of its past. Besides, influence in one state does not necessarily transcend to other states.
There are at least a dozen Haryana assembly segments bordering Delhi, where AAP has yet to make an impact in the last ten years.
While the majority of the state Congress leadership may not be in favour of an alliance with the AAP, it does not want to take any chances for two reasons.
One, nobody wants to go against Rahul Gandhi, who is strongly in favour of an alliance and two, the Madhya Pradesh experience still haunts the party.
In Madhya Pradesh, the central leadership had favoured an alliance with the Samajwadi Party. But an overconfident Kamal Nath overruled it. The massive defeat the party suffered there, despite anti-incumbency against the BJP, was attributed to this “wrong calculation” by the party, there. Nath paid a heavy price for that.
Anti-incumbency may not essentially hold true
The situation in Haryana is more or less similar to MP. Here it is a direct fight between the Congress and the BJP. The BJP is in power for ten years, while in MP it was in power for twenty years. Long tenure in power does not necessarily mean anti-incumbency against the government and a guaranteed victory.
Moreover, Haryana has an unbroken record for decades of going along with the party that is in power at the centre. In the parliamentary elections, the BJP’s vote share was 44 per cent against 42 of the Congress.
This is the reason the Congress does not want to take any chance in Haryana. The party does not mind conceding a few seats to the AAP to strengthen its chances in the state.
The alliance with the AAP, if it happens, will come at a cost and may not necessarily guarantee what Congress expects. It may prevent the division of votes, but it cannot guarantee the transfer of votes from one party to another. The Congress will risk losing its prominent people and workers, most likely to the
BJP, in all the segments it leaves for the AAP.
Besides, it may also convey a sense of fear and nervousness within the Congress that it lacked the confidence to fight the BJP on its own.
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