New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today announced two candidates for Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat without consulting the I.N.D.I. Alliance partners and Congress party. The party has also announced candidates for 3 seats in Assam and Goa. The party has already withdrawn from the INDI block in Punjab and will be contesting polls alone.

Sandeep Pathak, Rajya Sabha MP, in a press conference today, said that a few days ago, “we announced three candidates for Lok Sabha polls in Assam, and I believe that the I.N.D.I. Alliance will accept this. Keeping the time in mind, we announce Venzy Viegas as the candidate to contest LS polls from the South Goa seat.” He also announced the candidature of Chaitar Vasava and Umesh Bhai Makwana for the Bharuch and Bhavnagar seats respectively.

AAP has also demanded 8 Lok Sabha seats out of the total 26 seats in Gujarat. Talking about this, the AAP leader said “in the state assembly polls, AAP had won 5 seats with a 13% vote share, while the Congress party had won 17 seats with a 27% vote share. So, based on merit, the AAP should get 1/3rd of the seats, and Congress should get 2/3rd of the seats. On this basis, we have demanded 8 seats from Congress.”

The Kejriwal-led party also went ahead to propose one seat for Congress in New Delhi. “Congress party won zero seats in (2019) Lok Sabha election, zero seats in Vidhan Sabha (Assembly), just nine out of 250 seats in MCD elections. As per this data, Congress doesn’t deserve even one seat (to contest). However, due to alliance ‘dharma’ and keeping Congress’ honour, we propose to give them one seat, and Aam Aadmi Party will contest on six seats,” added Pathak.

The AAP leader said that we want to discuss seat-sharing with the alliance, but if we don’t reach an agreement, we will announce the candidate for the remaining seats and start preparing for the Lok Sabha elections. DeshGujarat