AAP will win all 13 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the next election, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann assured the media in Chandigarh on Wednesday. He also ruled out forming an alliance with the Congress.
Chandigarh: On Wednesday, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann declared that the state would not be joining the Congress or sharing seats during the Lok Sabha elections.
In the Opposition’s 28-party INDIA alliance, which aims to unseat the Modi administration in the next elections, the AAP and the Congress are friends.
Speaking to reporters after this cabinet meeting, the chief minister ruled out forming an alliance with the Congress and predicted that the AAP will win all 13 of the state’s seats.
Even though a few AAP MLAs have stated this in the past, the chief minister has never mentioned it before.
Following the announcement by Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal and leader of the Trinamool Congress, that her party will stand alone in the state’s Lok Sabha elections, Mann made her statements.
The Mann government has filed numerous corruption cases against well-known Congress leaders since taking office in March 2022; these cases, which the Congress unit in Punjab has called a “witch-hunt,” have led them to object to a seat-sharing arrangement with the AAP.
While some state political analysts credit Mann’s choice to the AAP’s assurance that it would win the majority of the state’s Lok Sabha seats, others argue that the BJP would gain from the move both at the federal level and in the state, where it is now a minor player.
In 2022, the AAP won 92 of Punjab’s 117 assembly seats, and they went on to seize control of the state.
Only Mann’s Sangrur, one of the state’s thirteen Lok Sabha seats, was won by the party in 2019 compared to four in 2014. Simranjit Singh Mann of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), which is distinct from the SAD of the Badals, gained the seat when Mann left it to become chief minister.
Following the death of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary last year, a bypoll was held to determine Sushil Kumar Rinku’s candidature for the Lok Sabha from Punjab. Rinku is the party’s only MP in the legislature.
After being booted out of the state in 2022, Punjab gave the Congress eight Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and three in 2014.