Behind AAP, Congress’s Delhi pact for LS polls: How the two parties zeroed in on seats

Having failed to win a single of Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats for a decade, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress have come together to contest the coming elections with the mutual objective of ending that losing streak. And their choice of seats, as agreed upon on Saturday, is a function of several factors related to “winnability”.

The terms of the agreement between the parties reflect the evolving ground realities, their ambitions, and also the fact that they share a common vote bank that can be summed up within the contours of the city’s slum and unauthorised colony apart from the minority and lower-middle class populations.

“When we contested separately, we ended up making the situation more amenable for the BJP. In a tri-corner contest, on the one hand, it was the BJP, with its consolidated vote bank that has been seen to remain intact over support for Hindutva or nationalism, and the common vote bank split between the AAP and the Congress. However, that will not be the case this time with both parties fighting together against a common enemy suffering a decade of anti-incumbency,” said an AAP leader.

According to sources, while the AAP relied on the work of its government, the grassroots support for its MLAs, and the popularity of its party chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to decide on its four seats, the Congress’s choice of constituencies reflects that it is banking on the city’s minority, reserved category, and economically weak communities.

“The Congress initially pitched a five-two seat-sharing proposal to us based on its vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in which it came second in five seats and the AAP in two,” a senior AAP leader said, adding, “Our counter was that the AAP has, in