Stepping up its pressure on its INDIA ally Congress over the delay in the seat-sharing talks, the AAP on Tuesday announced its candidates for two seats in Gujarat and one seat in Goa for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
The decision to announce its candidates in Goa and Gujarat was taken at a meeting of AAP’s Political Affairs Committee chaired by the party’s national convenor Arvind Kejriwal.
Last week, the Arvind Kejriwal-led party unilaterally announced its candidates from the Guwahati, Sonitpur and Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seats in Assam.
AAP leader Sandeep Pathak said the decision to field its candidates in Goa, Gujarat and Assam was taken based on the merit and winnability of the candidates to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections that are likely to be held in April-May.
Explaining the reason behind the AAP announcing its candidates, Pathak said it was due to repeated failed attempts to hold discussions with the Congress over seat-sharing last month.
“We held two official meetings on seat-sharing with the Congress, on January 8 and January 12. Both meetings took place in a congenial atmosphere. But no result came out,” he said.
Pathak said that no meeting had taken place with the Congress since then and some prominent leaders of the party were also clueless as to when the seat-sharing talks would be held.
He said the decision to announce the AAP candidates for the Lok Sabha polls was taken with the Lok Sabha polls nearing and cited the Congress’s busy schedule of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra.
“We kept waiting. Meanwhile, I got a chance to meet many prominent leaders of Congress and they too have no idea. There is no clarity as to when the next meeting will be held. It is going to be more than a month. In such a situation, if your aim is to win the election, then a question arises in your mind. You worry that it will be very difficult to win the election in this way,” he said.
“This worry is the reason why I am sitting here today. I am sitting here with a heavy heart. This wouldn’t have been required had we talked,” the AAP leader added.
Pathak said the AAP is a part of the INDIA bloc with “full honesty and dedication”. He asserted whatever it took to make the alliance successful, the party would do it with full strength.
“But you must understand that the objective of the alliance is to contest elections, win elections and give a new option to the country. If contesting elections and winning elections is the basis of this entire exercise, then all things related to contesting elections become important. This includes making announcements, planning your campaign, getting everyone together and discussing how to take this election forward,” he said.
Pathak said he was hopeful that the three candidates announced by the AAP for Assam for the Lok Sabha polls would be acceptable to the INDIA bloc. “A few days ago, we announced three candidates in Assam. I hope that the alliance will accept these three candidates that we have announced,” he said.
Speaking about the announcement of Benaulim MLA Venzy Viegas as the AAP candidate for the South Goa parliamentary constituency, Pathak said the party had bagged two seats in the region in the state assembly polls while three were won by the Congress.
“Both our MLAs are doing good work in South Goa and are quite popular there. So, keeping in mind the seat share and the winnability, AAP has nominated its candidate for one (South Goa) seat and one parliamentary seat ticket must go to the Congress. “Keeping that in mind, we announced the candidature of Venzy Viegas,” he said.
The party also announced the parliamentary candidature of two AAP leaders from Gujarat — Dediapada MLA Chaitar Vasava and Botad MLA Umeshbhai Makwana. While Chaitar Vasava will contest from Bharuch, Umeshbhai Makwana will contest from Bhavnagar.
“I hope that the INDIA bloc will accept it and by working hard, we will win these seats in Gujarat,” he said.
Sandeep Pathak said the AAP won five seats with a 13 per cent vote share, while the Congress got 17 seats with a 27 per cent vote share in the Gujarat assembly polls.
“If you look at it purely scientifically and on a merit basis, then the AAP should get one-third of seats and the Congress should get two-thirds of seats in the Lok Sabha elections to contest under the alliance. According to this, our share of seats for the parliamentary election comes to eight, keeping the merit and winnability in perspective,” he said.
Claiming that the Congress insisted on contesting from Bharuch, Pathak said winnability and not ‘parivarwad‘ (dynasty) should be the criterion to defeat the BJP in the polls.
“The Congress leaders claimed the Bharuch seat for emotional reasons as it was represented by the late Ahmad Patel in 1984. They said Patel’s daughter (Mumtaz) would contest from this seat. We will have to get rid of ‘parivarwad’ if we want to defeat the BJP,” he said.
“We have asked for eight seats from the INDIA bloc. We have announced two seats today and after considering the candidates for the remaining six seats, we will announce them in a few days. The Congress Party will contest in 18 seats and the AAP will contest in eight seats, which is reasonable based on merit and vote share,” he added.
Pathak also said the AAP will contest all the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab on its own.
He also hoped that the talks on seat-sharing in Haryana and Chandigarh will soon be held with the Congress.
(with inputs from PTI)
Source Agencies
