The Congress party has unanimously supported Sheila Dikhshit's decision to reject an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi. With the Congress shutting the prospect of alliance, the national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has slammed the party saying that when the whole nation is fighting against the Modi-Amit Shah duo, the grand old party is helping the BJP by splitting anti-BJP vote. He even claimed that Congress has some secret understanding with the BJP. He further said that Delhi is ready to fight against the Congress-BJP alliance.

Although, the Congress has rejected the alliance, if one analyses the data given on the Election Commission website the numbers reveal that if Congress had accepted the 3+3+1 seat-sharing formula of AAP, the alliance could have been a challenge for the ruling BJP.

 Vote share of 2014 (Source: Election Commission of India)

The above data clearly shows that if in 2014 the Congress and AAP had fought the elections together they could have easily won all the seats except west Delhi. The vote share of BJP in 2014 was 46 percent. The cumulative vote share of AAP and Congress stands 48 percent.

Mohit Pandey, a political researcher who has worked with C-voters and AAP election research team, says, “Winning election is not all about numbers and past trends. Undoubtedly, the Congress-AAP alliance would have helped the Congress to revive and AAP's entry in the parliament. The alliance would have worked for both parties since their vote bank is same and their socio-economic sections include slum dwellers, auto rickshaw drivers, purvanchalis and people living in unauthorized colonies. Now, it seems to be a tough road ahead for AAP. Moreover, in 2014 too, Delhi citizens never voted for candidates but for Narendra Modi. Let the other parties declare their candidates and manifestos, it would be too early to comment.”

A senior leader of Congress on the condition of anonymity says, “The votes AAP got in 2014 belonged to Congress. In 2013, the newly born party ate our vote bank and completely swiped us in 2015 legislative assembly elections. But our vote share had increased in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) 2017 election and it would further increase in Lok Sabha 2019 election. If we would have gone in alliance with AAP, the grand old party would have looked dependable. Moreover, the state assembly election will be held eight months after the Lok Sabha election of 2019. BJP doesn’t have a face for the assembly election, and AAP is facing anti-incumbency, there are lots of chances that we can easily come in 2020 assembly election. Why would we risk it by allying with AAP?”

Rejecting the claim of the Congress, Brijesh Goyal, AAP, Lok Sabha candidate from New Delhi, says, “In a hope to consolidate the vote against the BJP, we were keen to have an alliance with the Congress in Delhi. But the party is full of arrogance and it refused it.”

Refusing the anti-incumbency claim against AAP in Delhi, Goyal says, “We have done a lot of work in the past four years such as no hike in electricity bills, waiving off from water bill, setting up mohalla clinics, the working of government schools, old age pension, abolishing inspector raj, and many others, and we want to do more. People have also seen how BJP didn’t co-operate with us and Delhi citizens will vote for us.”

While it seems that there will be no alliance in Delhi for now, few politicians who wished for it will always play the blame game and keep talking about it, till the election results are declared.