AAP-Cong talks for 2019 LS polls tie-up in final stages?

New Delhi: While the Delhi Pradesh Congress on Saturday officially rejected any tie-up with Aam Aadmi Party, talks between the two outfits are said to have begun in Punjab for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

On Saturday, DPCC president Ajay Maken categorically stated that the “Delhi Congress will not have any electoral tie-up with the AAP.”

Meanwhile, leader of Opposition in Punjab and senior AAP politician  Sukhpal Singh Khaira has said that he was not against such an alliance to take on the BJP in the next general elections. Sources in the AAP said that most of the party leaders would be "comfortable' with the alliance, if it promises AAP’s chances of repeating its performace of 2014, when the party managed to wrestle four Lok Sabha seats in Punjab. An AAP leader said that even if the Congress could offer five out of 13 parliamentary seats in the state, the arithmetic could work for the AAP.

The possibility of alliance could, however, be dampened as the senior AAP leader H.S. Phoolka has said that he is willing to quit, if his party decides to join hands with the Congress. He said that though his party might decide to go-ahead with such an alliance, the issue of 1984 Sikh riots is paramount to him.

A senior Congress leader, meanwhile, said that AAP would only benefit in Punjab by joining hands with it. "Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar had last month confirmed that he had brief talks with some AAP MPs in the Parliament and at that time this mega alliance was not even in the picture. It seems that the churning has been on for some time,” he said.

The fortunes of the AAP have continued to nose-dive in the state and the many believe that the Lok Sabha polls next year, would be only chance for the party's survival. After winning 20 seats in the last assembly elections, it lost six elections, including four corporations, Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll and now Shahkot assembly by-election.

In Delhi, while Mr Maken held Mr Kejriwal responsible for the "rise of the demon of Modi", it was learnt that AAP had approached the Congress for the alliance, and offered a 5:2 formula, which meant five seats for the AAP and two for the Congress in Delhi. The Congress, which claimed that its vote share has gone up by nearly 14 per cent since the last Assembly polls has asked for three seats. In Punjab, where AAP was struggling to make inroads had approached for an alliance for the Lok Sabha polls. Sources revealed that the talks were in final stages.

Sources said that the informal talks between the grand old party and the AAP began on May 24, with Jairam Ramesh and Ajay Maken representing the former. A source added that the AAP approached the Congress for the alliance, with an offer of a 5:2 ratio for seat sharing in Delhi — five seats for the AAP and two for the Congress.

The Congress party, however, demanded for three out of the seven seats, which included New Delhi for Sharmishtha Mukherjee, Chandni Chowk for Ajay Maken and North West Delhi for Rajkumar Chauhan. However, talks may have hit a stumbling block, as AAP is not willing to give up more than two seats to the Congress.

The speculations about the alliance between the two political outfits gathered steam further after Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday praised former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Twitter. It is worthy to note that Mr Kejriwal had earlier been a strong critic of Manmohan Singh going as far to say in 2013 that, "Manmohan failed to check corruption within Congress and his own government". However, BJP's ever expanding footprint in the country has now made once bitter foes, the best of friends.