Hours after the Aam Aadmi Party suffered one of its biggest-ever setbacks since its inception as it lost the national capital to a resurgent BJP, the Congress party, one of the members of the “United opposition” front INDI Alliance, washed its hands of the AAP’s rout in the Delhi assembly elections.
It is not the Congress party’s duty to ensure AAP’s victory, party spokesperson Supriya Shrinate told NDTV on Saturday, as the Aam Aadmi Party suffered a significant defeat in the 2025 Assembly elections.
“The responsibility of securing AAP’s win does not lie with Congress. We will focus on strengthening our presence in politically promising regions, and Delhi is a state where we have governed for 15 years,” she stated.
Reiterating her stance, Shrinate emphasised, “Our priority is to run a strong campaign and contest elections with full determination, rather than working to make AAP win.”
She further pointed out, “Going by that logic, Arvind Kejriwal also contested elections in Goa, Haryana, Gujarat, and Uttarakhand. In Goa and Uttarakhand, the AAP’s vote share was exactly the margin by which Congress lost to the BJP, indicating that the outcome might have been different otherwise.”
Shrinate’s strident criticism of the Aam Aadmi Party after the Delhi election debacle comes in the wake of tensions between the two parties during the campaigning—when both Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal traded potshots at each other—highlighting the widening rift within the members of once touted as the alliance that would chip away at the BJP’s electoral dominance.
Earlier today, Omar Abdullah’s dig at the mounting tensions between Congress and AAP exemplified the challenges faced by the INDI alliance, where parties with disparate ideologies came together to cobble up a bloc with a singular aim to defeat Prime Minister Modi. The goal, however, didn’t materialise as PM Modi scraped by another general election victory, creating history by becoming Prime Minister for the third time in a row.
