NEW DELHI: “Stop the bickering. Let’s together fight the larger battle!” – Kapil Sibal‘s advice to Arvind Kejriwal after the AAP convener’s latest offensive against the Congress is unlikely to impress the former Delhi chief minister.Sibal, who served as Union minister in the UPA governments and is currently an Independent Rajya Sabha member, counselled Kejriwal after the AAP convener alleged a nexus between the BJP and the Congress and questioned why no “big leader” of the grand old party had been arrested in the National Herald case.“We keep on getting offers for a compromise. Now, even people are seeing that Congress has reached a compromise with the BJP. The National Herald case is an open and shut case. But no big leader of the Congress has gone to jail. Five of our big leaders were sent to jail in a fake case,” Kejriwal said at a meeting of AAP MLAs and councillors in the national capital.Citing examples from Goa, the AAP supremo emphasised, “People ask why the BJP has sent five of AAP’s top leaders to jail but not a single Congress leader. They shout endlessly about the National Herald case, which I myself read about online. As per facts, it looks like an open-and-shut case. Yet despite serious allegations, no one from the Gandhi family has gone to jail, while we are jailed in completely fabricated cases.“Kejriwal also made a mention of the land scam cases of Haryana and named Robert Vadra to highlight his point. “In 2014 the BJP built its campaign around ‘jija ji’ (brother-in-law) and corruption, shouting about Vadra, 2G and coal scams. Yet today, all those cases have quietly been shut. The people are not fools. They can see the reality–that Congress and BJP are in a hidden alliance,” he said.Kejriwal and several other AAP leaders were booked and arrested in the alleged liquor scam case and other cases. All the AAP leaders were eventually granted bail. However, Kejriwal resigned ahead of the assembly elections and made Atishi the chief minister of Delhi.Sibal, who has been associated with the grand old party for a long time, was quick to remind Kejriwal about the consequences of his baseless allegations against political rivals in the past.“Kejriwal ji: When you made allegations against several politicians and others and was dragged to court you apologised! Today you made baseless allegations against the Gandhi family (National Herald case). Stop the bickering. Let’s together fight the larger battle!” Sibal said in a post on X.But the question is: Will Kejriwal heed Sibal’s advice? Well, it seems unlikely as the ties between the two parties nosedived during the last Delhi elections when Congress played a key role in the defeat of AAP at the hands of the BJP.While both Congress and AAP are part of the opposition’s INDIA bloc, the two parties have all along shared uneasy ties – characterised by threats, warnings and blackmails. When INDIA bloc was formed, Kejriwal made AAP’s participation conditional to Congress’s support against the Centre’s Delhi ordinance. The two parties did join hands in Delhi for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections after a lot of back and forth, but the experiment failed to stop the BJP from winning all the 7 Lok Sabha seats in the national capital for the third time in a row.In the assembly elections, the two allies turned into bitter rivals and went all out to discredit each other. With the Congress putting all its might against AAP, the BJP gained and managed to return to power in the national capital after a long gap of 27 years.In Haryana assembly elections, the two parties tried to stich an alliance but could not reach a common ground. In several other states like Gujarat, Goa, the AAP has successfully contested on its own and managed to spread its reach. Till they lost elections in Delhi, AAP was the only party besides BJP and Congress to have government in two states.The Congress, on the other hand, despite all its electoral reverses in the last 11 years, remains the only opposition party with pan-India presence and hence takes the position of principal challenger to the BJP.Any attempt to broker peace between AAP and Congress is unlikely to succeed as the two parties remain rivals in Punjab where assembly elections are due early in 2027. Both the parties have huge stakes in the state. In the last assembly elections in 2022, AAP had decimated the Congress and stormed to power winning 92 of the 117 assembly seats in the state.For AAP, Punjab remains the only state where it has government and hence led by Kejriwal the party will go out to retain the state. On the other hand, the Congress which has considerable presence in the state, will do everything possible to return to power.In the given scenario, it will be difficult for AAP and Congress to come together for the larger fight – the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, when the INDIA bloc will once again try to challenge the dominance of BJP-led NDA.
