The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) announced that it will contest 2019 Lok Sabha polls on the slogan of ‘Poorna Rajya Banao Jhadu ka Button Dabao’, essentially informing people the national Capital will get full Statehood if they vote for the party. The AAP would start election campaign on March 23 and plans to organise 280 jan sabhas by April 30.

AAP’s national convener Gopal Rai reiterated on Tuesday that there would be no alliance with the Congress.  “The Congress is not interested in saving the country. The Congress party continues in denial mode over alliance, it shows that the party is interested in saving its ego instead of defeating the authoritarian Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP),” he said.

Rai said that the Congress is not interested in defeating the Modi-Shah duo. “This is clear from across the country, be it Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi, Bihar or Andhra Pradesh. In all these states, the Congress is thinking about saving its own party and its ego setting aside national interest,” he said.

He said that the party will launch its election campaign in five phases, beginning on March 23. “The party will hold 280 jansabha in all five phases besides its top leaders,

MLAs and Councillors will also participate in corner meeting all over the city. In last phase, the party workers will distribute letter of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal,” he said.

Hitting out at Congress, he said that it was wasting time for poll campaigning.   “They are not coming out with a clear stand about alliance. We will now focus on defeating the BJP on our own,” he added.

“AAP will fight the Lok Sabha polls on the issue of full Statehood,” Rai said.

With this, the back and forth over an AAP-Congress alliance in the national Capital continued on Tuesday as senior leaders of Congress said an options for forging a partnership is under process but the ruling AAP is now in complete denial mode saying that  it would fight the Lok Sabha polls alone.

The ruling AAP had earlier on March 2 announced the names of its candidates for the six Lok Sabha seats.

The AAP declared its seventh candidate for West Delhi Lok Sabha seats on Sunday.

The party insiders said the name of Balbir Singh Jhakhar was announced after the recalcitrant attitude of the Congress leadership towards forging an alliance in the national Capital.

The other six AAP candidates are Atishi from East Delhi, Guggan Singh from North-West Delhi, Raghav Chadha from South, Dilip Pandey from North-East, Pankaj Gupta from Chandni Chowk and Brijesh Goyal from New Delhi seat.