The Congress never had an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), said the party's senior leader Shakeel Ahmed on Saturday, while the BJP claimed to retain all the seven Lok Sabha seats in the city-state.
The two-party's reaction came after Delhi's Cabinet Minister Gopal Rai on Saturday announced AAP's candidates for six Lok Sabha seats, thus bringing all speculations about the Congress-AAP alliance to an end.
Ahmed told ANI: "AAP is a party, but we never had an alliance with them. They have declared their Lok Sabha candidates. We will fight on all seven Lok Sabha seats alone in Delhi. We will announce our candidates for Delhi when we announce our candidates for all other Lok Sabha seats."
AAP has fielded Brajesh Goyal from New Delhi, Atishi from East Delhi, Dilip K Pandey from North East Delhi, Raghav Chadha from South Delhi, Pankaj Gupta from Chandani Chowk, and Gugan Singh from North West Delhi. AAP has not yet announced the candidate for West Delhi Lok Sabha seat.
Congress leader from Delhi and former minister Haroon Yusuf said: "Whatever AAP is doing, it is completely their decision. We don't have anything to do with this."
"In a meeting on Friday at the place of DPCC president Sheila Dixit, attended by all Congress leaders. Everyone was of the view that we should not form an alliance with the AAP as they did not do anything in the last four years other than fooling the people," he said.
Rajya Sabha MP KTS Tulsi said: "All this is a part of hard bargaining and eventually they may fall in line."
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BJP MP from North West Delhi Udit Raj said: "AAP's candidate, who will contest from my seat is very weak. He will definitely lose the election. AAP candidates will lose their deposits."
"Even if the AAP and the Congress would have been in an alliance, there wouldn't have been any change in our popularity, vote bank or support. The way we won all 7 seats in the last election, we will these seats this time as well," he said.
BJP MP from East Delhi Mahesh Giri said: "AAP used to curse the Congress. AAP supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said that they tried hard but the Congress did not come to the alliance." "However, we will all seven LS seats in Delhi," he said.
Rajya Sabha MP and BJP leader Prabhat Jha said: "Congress is doing alliance all over the nation. Their alliance will be made and broken because their alliance is meant for self-interest. They do alliance only for power.