Ready to contest all seats: Haryana AAP’s evening deadline for Congress poll pact

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s Haryana chief on Monday said that they would release the full list of candidates for the upcoming assembly election if a decision on an alliance with the Congress wasn’t taken by evening. Haryana will vote for 90 assembly seats on October 5.

Sushil Gupta, the AAP state chief, said that the Haryana unit is ready to release a list of candidates for all assembly seats by Monday evening, also adding that they have not received any final word from the party leadership on an alliance with the Congress.

“As AAP Haryana chief, I’m preparing for the 90 assembly seats. We haven’t received news about the alliance from high command. If we don’t receive news today, we’ll release our list for all 90 seats by evening,” Gupta said.

AAP MP Sanjay Singh also said on Monday that the party is fully prepared in Haryana. He noted that the process of picking candidates for the upcoming polls has been completed, and the list will be released as soon as they get permission from the party leadership.

Talks to finalise a pre-poll deal are underway between Congress and Arvind Kejriwal’s party AAP. AAP MP Raghav Chadha, who is leading the discussions on behalf of the party, said on Sunday that he is hopeful of a positive outcome, stating that it would be a ‘win-win’ situation for both parties.

Sources earlier stated that Congress and AAP had reached an in-principle understanding to jointly contest the upcoming Haryana Assembly elections. Initial discussions were also held between the two parties, involving Raghav Chadha and Congress leader Deepak Babaria.

However, subsequent reports hinted at a roadblock in the talks as AAP remained firm on its seat demands. AAP initially reportedly demanded around 20 seats under the alliance, while Congress leaders stated they would be given seats in the “single digits.”

The AAP was also firm on getting key Assembly seats, particularly Kalayat and at least one seat in Kurukshetra.

Meanwhile, the Congress on Sunday released its second list of nine candidates for the Haryana Assembly polls. With this list, the party has declared a total of 41 candidates for polls to the 90-member Assembly. AAP is yet to announce any list