AAP-Congress alliance: What's the impact on AAP's 'anti-political' appeal?

In a setback to the Opposition INDIA alliance in Delhi, which is basically the alliance between the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee President Arvinder Singh Lovely has resigned from his post, and one of the reasons he has cited is his party’s tie-up with AAP.

Lovely’s resignation letter has put the spotlight on what is widely recognised as a big contradiction – an alliance between the Congress party, and a party that came into being to combat the kind of political decadence that the Congress allegedly represented. In fact, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal has spent much of the last ten years targeting the Congress more than any other party, and in turn, the Delhi state leadership of the Congress has spent much of its energies targeting AAP. Furthermore, it is the Congress that’s the original complainant in the alleged liquor scam case that has landed Kejriwal in jail.

So, how does this alliance square with the founding credo of the Aam Aadmi Party? How can AAP explain this alliance to its supporters? Given that the two parties have suddenly found ‘anti-BJPism’ more attractive as a political plank than anti-corruption, does this alliance then indicate that the founders of AAP – several of whom are currently in jail on corruption charges – were fundamentally wrong in their understanding of political corruption?

G. Sampath is joined by Prashant Bhushan, Supreme Court advocate and a former leader with AAP.

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