Amid the ongoing talks between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress for a tie-up for the October 5 Haryana Assembly polls, the AAP's electoral track record in the state has again come under the spotlight. Although the AAP has made multiple attempts to make inroads in Haryana, its performance has remained dismal with the party failing to open its account in any of the Assembly elections or the Lok Sabha polls since its poll debut in the state in 2014. The AAP's best performance in Haryana came in the recent 2024 Lok Sabha polls when it contested from the Kurukshetra constituency in alliance with the Congress as part of the Opposition INDIA bloc, even though it lost the seat to the ruling BJP in a close fight. While contesting nine of Haryana's 10 Lok Sabha seats, the Congress left Kurukshetra for AAP candidate Sushil Gupta. Backed by the Congress, Gupta, who is also the state AAP president, lost to the ruling BJP's Naveen Jindal by about 29,000 votes. Gupta, however, got over 5.13 lakh votes. The AAP first made its electoral foray in the state barely one-and-a-half years after its inception in November 2012. Significantly, the AAP's supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal hails from Siwani village in Haryana's Bhiwani district. The 2014 Lok Sabha polls saw the AAP contest all 10 seats in the state. Among the major parties, it fared worst with all its candidates losing their security deposits. Of the 1.6 crore votes polled, the AAP candidates collectively managed to secure just 4.89 lakh votes or 4.2% of the vote share. Among the prominent faces who contested then on the AAP tickets was Yogendra Yadav from the Gurgaon seat. However, he finished fourth with 79,452 votes. He later went on to form his own party. Another AAP leader Naveen Jaihind, who also later quit the party, contested from Rohtak but managed to get just 46,759 votes, losing to the Congress’s Deepender Singh Hooda by more than 4.4 lakh votes. All 10 AAP candidates finished either fourth or fifth in their respective seats. Subsequently, the party did not contest the Haryana Assembly polls held in October 2014. For the Lok Sabha polls in 2019, the AAP forged an alliance with the Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), getting three seats as compared to the JJP’s seven. The AAP fielded its then Haryana unit chief Naveen Jaihind from Faridabad, former Himachal Pradesh DGP Prithvi Raj from Ambala, and advocate Krishan Kumar Agarwal from Karnal. The results came as another blow to the AAP as all its candidates lost their security deposits, together managing to garner just over 45,000 votes. In the 2019 Assembly polls, the AAP decided to contest solo and fielded candidates in 46 seats. But the party again drew a blank, finishing with less than 1% of the votes polled. The 2024 Lok Sabha polls marked a silver lining for the AAP even though it failed to win the Kurukshetra seat it contested under a seat-sharing pact with the Congress. The AAP raised its vote share from 0.36% to 3.94%, even though it contested just one seat. At the Assembly segment level then, the BJP won the most votes in 44 of the state’s 90 Assembly seats, while the Congress and the AAP led in 42 and 4 seats respectively. So the Congress and the AAP tallies combined had an edge over the BJP, even as it hit the simple majority mark. The AAP leaders thus see a possible alliance with the Congress as a “game changer” for the party. “Defeating the BJP and its politics of hatred and politics against people, farmers and youth is a priority for all of us,” AAP leader Sanjay Singh said. While the All India Congress Committee (AICC) has also echoed such views, a large section of the state Congress seems to be resisting any alliance with the AAP as it believes the grand old party is in a strong position to take on the BJP on its own steam. Senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, has maintained that “Congress is capable of contesting, winning and forming the government in Haryana on its own”. Another senior Congress leader said, “The Congress-AAP alliance will give BJP another handle to hit at Congress. With top AAP leaders under a cloud over the Delhi liquor policy scam and several Congress MLAs also facing corruption charges, it will be tougher for us to counter BJP's attacks.” The AAP, however, believes that its alliance with the Congress could turn the tide in its favour, especially in areas bordering Punjab and Delhi where the party is in power.
