Even Cong-AAP alliance could not have stopped BJP sweep

NEW DELHI: After the humongous victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the seven seats of Delhi, the question which is buzzing among the residents and party workers that if the alliance between AAP and Congress could have stopped the BJP in all these seats.

However, the trend in Delhi showed that the AAP-Confress alliance might not have worked to defeat the BJP.

As counting began at 8 am on Thursday, the voting trends in Delhi were clearly in favour of the BJP. At 1.40 pm, the BJP recorded a 56.1% vote share in Delhi, a jump of almost 10 per cent from 2014.

The Congress' vote share increased to 22.3 percent from 15.2 percent in 2014, while AAP's reduced to 18.5 percent from 33.1 percent. According to numbers, the combined number of AAP and Congress would be around 41 per cent which would not have been enough to keep the BJP out of power.

However, a section of both parties believes that this number is not comparable with the speculative number of if an alliance happened.

Sources in both parties said that the effect of non-alliance on the grass root level played a huge role in this result.

Ahead of the elections, the Opposition Congress and Aam Aadmi Party had started negotiations to fight the Delhi seats as allies.

After talks broke down, many political observers suggested that the split in the vote in Delhi between the Congress and AAP would benefit the

BJP. While the minority vote shifted from the AAP to the Congress the AAP also lost its ground from their strongholds such as the slums and unauthorised colonies. In all the seats which has large numbers of slums and the unauthorised colonies, the AAP has significantly performed in those areas.

"The non-alliance has played a very negative role in Delhi. People voted for the Center and as we could not form an alliance the people lost the faith on our political narrative," said a senior AAP leader.

In 2014, while both AAP and Congress did not get even one parliamentary seat in Delhi, AAP defeated Congress and BJP in the 2015 Assembly elections. In 2017, the BJP swept the municipal corporation elections.

AAP and Congress were neck-and-neck with regard to vote share that year.