Will AAP-Congress alliance work in Delhi and Punjab?

An assessment based on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls

Last month, the Congress party decided to support the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in opposing the Delhi Ordinance Bill in Parliament, which prevented AAP from drifting away from the opposition camp, which is seeking to bolster its numbers to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. And now both parties are gearing up for an alliance in 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Let’s have a look at the situation in Delhi and Punjab:

DELHI

The situation remains the same in Delhi, where the BJP won all seven Lok Sabha seats in 2019 with about a 57 per cent vote share, whereas Congress secured 23 per cent and the AAP got merely an 18 per cent vote share. If we add the vote share of both the Congress and the AAP, the BJP is way ahead of them.

As far as the Congress is concerned, even after scoring nil in the 2015 and 2020 assembly polls, got more votes from Delhi voters in the 2019 Lok Sabha election than the AAP. In five of the seven Lok Sabha seats, the Congress came in second place. The third party was AAP. Only in South and North-West Delhi did people choose the Arvind Kejriwal-led party as their second choice.

In South Delhi, the BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri won by 56.57 per cent of the votes polled in the constituency. Raghav Chadha of the AAP secured 26.34 per cent, and Congress got only 13.55 per cent.

North-West Delhi constituency sent Hans Raj Hans of the BJP with a whopping 60.49 per cent of votes. In this constituency, AAP stood second with 21 per cent and Congress came in a distant third by getting just 16.88 per cent of votes.

Given its two consecutive victories in the 2015 and 2020 assembly elections with 55 and 54 per cent vote shares, respectively, AAP may hope to achieve a swing in its favour in Delhi after forming an alliance with the Congress. But the outcomes of the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and 2019 are also strong indicators that while Delhi people want the AAP to lead the assembly, they do not think the party is qualified for a position in the Centre.

PUNJAB

In Punjab, the NDA, which included the BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal, each won two seats in the 2019 elections, while the Congress won eight seats. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had won Sangrur with 37 per cent votes in the triangular contest where Congress polled 27.4 and SAD polled 23.8 per cent.

If we talk about the party-wise vote share in Punjab, Congress secured 40.57 per cent, SAD-BJP combined 37.49 per cent, and AAP merely 7.46 per cent, respectively.

An alliance of AAP and Congress could damage the SAD in Bhatinda, as it had won the seat with 41 per cent of the votes, while Congress got 39.17 per cent and AAP secured 11.18 per cent of the votes.

Even in Hoshiarpur, the BJP received slightly more votes (42.5%) than the combined votes of the AAP and Congress (42%). In light of this circumstance, the AAP-Congress coalition would find it challenging to steal this seat from the BJP.

And the duo could find it difficult to challenge the SAD in Firozpur, as the latter won there by polling 54.1 percent of the votes. Here, the Congress scored 37.05 per cent and the AAP merely 2.72 per cent of the vote.

SAD’s ally at that time, the BJP, had won Gurdaspur with a 51 per cent vote share, while the Congress and AAP combined got only 45.63 per cent votes, with AAP scoring just 2.51 per cent votes.

In light of these situations, the AAP-Congress coalition would find it challenging to wrest seats from the BJP, even in Punjab