New Delhi: The BJP Tuesday told its new legislators in Delhi to prepare for fresh polls after elections threw up a hung assembly, party sources said.
“Don’t consider yourself as MLAs but as candidates,” a source quoted former party president Nitin Gadkari as telling the legislators after the party finished with 31 seats in the 70-member assembly.
The sources told IANS that Gadkari said the party was not keen to win over legislators from other parties to cobble a majority in the house.
The Aam Aadmi Party won 28 seats while the Congress got only eight. Neither the BJP and AAP are keen to form a government.
Kejriwal refuses to back BJP
The Aam Aadmi Party won’t prop up the BJP in Delhi’s hung assembly, its founder leader Arvind Kejriwal said Tuesday.
Speaking a day after senior colleague Prashant Bhushan suggested giving issue-based support to the BJP, Kejriwal said: “Neither we will take support nor give support (to form a government). There is no question.”
Kejriwal instead advised the Bharatiya Janata Party, which with 31 seats is the single largest group in the 70-member house, to take power with the help of the Congress, which has eight legislators.
The AAP finished with 28 seats in its maiden electoral debut. A party must have at least 36 legislators on its side to enjoy a bare majority.
“Let the BJP and Congress join hands… Both indulge in corruption. The BJP is the single largest party. Let them join hands with the Congress and form a government,”
Kejriwal said AAP leader and lawyer Prashant Bhushan’s suggestion that AAP could give selective support for a BJP government was his personal view.
“It (was) his personal opinion,” he said. “(What I am saying) is the party’s opinion.”
On Tuesday, Bhushan fell in line with the party’s view.
Bhushan said there was no question of supporting the BJP as the one-year-old AAP was created as an alternative to national parties such as Congress and the BJP.
“We cannot support or take support from the Congress and BJP. My comment was in a rhetorical context … if in case the two parties also follow the AAP policies and ideologies,” he clarified.
Kejriwal said the AAP’s near victory in Delhi — the result Sunday ended 15 years of Congress rule — had given “a ray of hope” to the nation.
Kejriwal appealed to the many “good people” in other political forces “who feel suffocated” to either revolt and reform their parties from within or quit their groups and join the AAP.
He said all right thinking people should “unite and utilise this historic opportunity” for the betterment of the country.
