Ludhiana, January 3, 2017: AAP supremo and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal today ruled out any possibility of forging an alliance with Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the coming 2017 Assembly election in Punjab.
Kejriwal stated this categorically while in Chandigarh today as part of his three-day visit of Punjab. With this, all speculations about alliance between both parties have been put to rest. Notably, recently appointed Punjab TMC unit chief and former Congressman Jagmeet Brar had been putting across the media about the need of such an alliance. He had even been quoted as saying that his party would wait for a response to this effect from AAP till January 4.
In the event, AAP failed to respond, his party would put up candidates in the coming elections, he had said. Interestingly, Punjab unit of TMC has been accepting runaways from AAP in a bid to strengthen its presence in the state where it has come into being quite recently.
Political observers however held the view that there did not seem any realistic chance of such an alliance at least at this stage because AAP had already fielded more than 100 candidates. Its leadership would prefer to avoid any crisis so close to the elections by accommodating candidates of another alliance partner at the cost of its own volunteers aspiring for the tickets. .