The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has finally managed to forge an alliance with a four-month-old party, Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) in Haryana to fight the ongoing general elections. Aam Aadmi Party will fight on three seats, while JJP will fight on seven.
JJP was launched by Dushyant Chautala, the grandson of former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala after he was expelled from Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) in November last year. Dushyant, with his father, Ajay were both expelled from INLD after they grew differences with Abhay, Ajay’s brother and their father. With the split, most of the office-bearers shifted to JJP and even Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) parted ways with INLD.
In the Jind by-polls that were held earlier this year BJP’s Krishan Midha won after defeating JJP’s Digvijay Singh Chautala by a margin of 12,935 votes. The elections had come as a rude shock to Congress where the senior leader and party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala finished on the third position.
As per reports, AAP had even offered an alliance between AAP, JJP and Congress but Congress rejected it. Meanwhile, AAP has decided to go with the JJP for Haryana.
AAP has been begging, pleading to the grand old party to forge an alliance to ‘defeat the BJP’ in the upcoming elections, but the Congress leaders like former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had been very strongly against an alliance.
After doggedly pursuing Congress to form an alliance to fight the upcoming Lok Sabha elections jointly and with senior AAP leaders including its chief Arvind Kejriwal’s repeated requests to Congress on forming a coalition, the Aam Aadmi Party in March declared that Congress has taken too long to deliberate on the alliance and the offer to fight jointly stood cancelled.
Amidst all this, the sinking ship that Aam Aadmi Party is, it has decided to hold on to whatever that comes its way so as to try and stay relevant. AAP has also announced that it is strong enough to take on BJP and Congress singlehandedly and will fight it out on 33 seats in Punjab and 7 seats of Delhi and win them all, ensuring Congress loses even its deposit.
