'A rising Kejriwal means BJP gets benefit': Congress leader Ajay Maken targets AAP

New Delhi: Sticking to his personal view that Arvind Kejriwal is “anti-national”, Congress Treasurer Ajay Maken on Saturday launched another attack on AAP, saying it could not stop the BJP winning Lok Sabha elections like his party did while in power in the national capital and allowing its rise will only be beneficial for the saffron camp.

Recalling Congress winning Delhi Assembly elections and then defeating the BJP in Lok Sabha elections in the capital, he appeared to remind I.N.D.I.A. allies, which announced support for AAP in Delhi elections, that one should understand that BJP could not be fought by weakening the grand old party.

Maken qualified his attack on Kejriwal and opined that Congress and Delhi suffered because of supporting the 49-day Kejriwal government in 2013 and then entering into an alliance for Lok Sabha election last year as “personal views” at a press conference held at the new party headquarters.

He indicated that the Congress refuses to take the blame for not having an alliance with AAP, saying that Kejriwal had unilaterally announced that his party would fight all 90 seats in Haryana when he came out of jail even as the discussions between both sides were in an “advanced stage”. Similarly a day after Lok Sabha results, he said, AAP announced they would fight alone.

“As long as the Congress government was in Delhi, we kept winning all the seven Lok Sabha seats and we stopped the BJP. Stopping the BJP in Delhi and winning the Lok Sabha seats also meant we stopped them at the national level also,” he said.

Whoever wins Delhi Lok Sabha seats forms the union government but since the AAP government has come to power in Delhi, just the opposite has happened and BJP has won all the seven seats in Delhi and formed the government at the Centre, he said.

On whether the Congress would support AAP in case of a hung Assembly, he said, “a rising Kejriwal means BJP gets the benefit. To defeat the BJP, it is necessary to have a strong Congress at the national level. If the organisation of Opposition is weak at the national level, then the BJP can never be fought. So to defeat the BJP, Congress needs to be strengthened. By weakening Congress, you cannot fight the BJP. All should understand this.”

Asked why the Congress aligned with the party headed by an “anti-national” as claimed by him, Maken said he is his “personal opinion” that supporting AAP in 2013 and entering into an alliance in 2024 caused harm to the people of Delhi and when the people of Delhi suffered, the BJP has benefited from it.

Maken’s remarks in December that Kejriwal is “anti-national” had triggered trouble in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc with AAP warning Congress that if it did not take action against the Congress leader, they would ask other parties to “drop” it from the Opposition bloc. The Congress leadership had asked Maken not to hold a follow up press conference.

When asked about when he would hold that press meet, Maken said, “I would do it before the election.”