The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party have reached an 'in-principal understanding' to fight next month's Haryana Assembly election together, sources told NDTV Tuesday evening.
The next step is divvying up the Assembly's 90 seats - a potentially tricky topic.
Sources said that in the early exchanges the AAP has demanded 10 seats, while the Congress is willing to give between five and seven only. The Congress is reportedly also willing to give one seat to the Samajwadi Party of ex Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
AAP Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha and Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal will likely meet Wednesday to sort this out, sources added.
The deadline for nominations is October 4 with voting on October 5.
There is no word on this alliance, should it hold through the Haryana election, extending into 2025 and the Delhi Assembly election, in which the AAP has triumphed every time since 2013 but faces a stern test this time, with Chief Minister and party boss Arvind Kejriwal still in jail in the liquor policy case.
All of this comes hours after it emerged that Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition, suggested the INDIA bloc members continue the partnership formed before the April-June general election.
READ | Rahul Gandhi Urges Congress To Consider AAP Deal In Haryana
Sources said Mr Gandhi wanted to retain the alliance to guard against division of votes.
In the 2024 Haryana Lok Sabha election, the Congress and AAP contested the state's 10 seats 9:1.
The Congress won five from its share. The AAP lost the one seat it was contesting - Kurukshetra - to the BJP's Naveen Jindal by around 29,000 votes. The two parties got 21.19 per cent and 1.11 per cent of the votes, respectively. Combined, this was well below the 36.5 per cent amassed by the BJP.
Also, the Congress' vote share was lower than it managed in the 2019 Lok Sabha (in which the BJP got over 58 per cent of the votes) and Assembly elections (the BJP got 36.49 per cent).
Nevertheless, the consolidation of the Congress and AAP voter bases was seen as helping the INDIA bloc win its five seats and stop the BJP from a second straight clean sweep in the heartland state.
A similarly united showing, Mr Gandhi believes, is needed to vote out the state's BJP government.
It is also important the Congress, and the opposition, continue momentum generated by the party and INDIA bloc's strong showing in the general election, with statement performances, if not wins, in the four remaining state polls this year. The other three are Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Jammu and Kashmir.
READ | J&K To Vote In 3 Phases, First Assembly Polls Since Article 370
Unfortunately for the AAP, the party lost the one seat it contested in Haryana.
This means the Congress sees itself in a position of strength ahead of seat-sharing talks.
"Fight Between BJP, Congress"
And that tallies with what sources told NDTV this morning - the Congress' Haryana leadership responded tentatively to Mr Gandhi's urging. Ex Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and members of the state unit apparently demurred giving up more than a handful of seats.
Speaking to NDTV last week Mr Hooda seemed to play down the state-level import of the AAP-Congress Lok Sabha election partnership. "The alliance we had was at the national level. We have not spoken to them (since). Here (in Haryana) the fight is between the BJP and the Congress."
NDTV Exclusive | Bhupinder Hooda On Why It Is Advantage Congress In Haryana
The AAP, for now, is maintaining a positive public face; Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh told reporters the party "welcomes" the alliance and stressed, "Our priority is to defeat the BJP."
In January Mr Kejriwal had said the AAP will contest Haryana's 90 seats on its own.
At a meeting of its Central Election Committee on Monday (the CEC is the Congress' highest decision-making body), the party apparently finalised names for 49 seats.
The party may re-nominate a majority of its sitting MLAs. On the new faces shortlist are Rajya Sabha MPs Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala and a high-profile surprise - wrestler Vineet Phogat.
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