Kejriwal, finally, has his way; Congress decides to commit suicide; gives fresh lease of life to AAP.
In the ultimate analysis, however, BJP will be the winner on almost all the seats, albeit with reduced margins.
Months of persuasion, coercion, deception,blackmailing by Kejriwal and finally Kejriwal is close to achieving, what he targetted for. Rahul Gandhi through his crony PC Chacko coerces local leadership of Congress to agree to his decision of committing "harakiri" and giving fresh lease of life to AAP. The alliance not only extinguishes any hope of Congress to become a ruling party or at least 2nd largest party in Delhi in near future but it also gives opportunity to AAP to survive in Delhi to Cong's disadvantage and find foothold in Haryana, where it is hardly a political force to reckon with for its rivals.
The alliance decision of two parties is guided by simple arithmetic i.e. 33% of AAP(in 2014) + 15% of Cong(in 2014) > 46.9% of BJP(in 2014)
However, will the Cong-AAP alliance at ground level follow the above arithmetic rationale?
As, I understand, Alliance may serve its limited purpose to the extent that division of Muslim votes shall be prevented. Now, Muslim voters will have no dilemma, whether to vote for AAP or Congress. With two parties coming together, there will be consolidation of Muslim votes against BJP. Even in cluster areas too, AAP shall manage to have marginal edge ( but not like previous three elections) over BJP but most of other sections of society, especially middle class, which voted for AAP in previous elections, due to ideological reasons, are feeling totally cheated by decision of AAP to align with Congress, the very party, against which Anna's anti corruption movement was launched and which ultimately helped newbie AAP under Kejriwal to come to power in Delhi in a grand way. As a consequence, despite consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of Cong-AAP alliance, the number of votes for alliance mayn't be enough to offset the loss of votes of other sections of society, especially middle class. Also, if there is consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of AAP-Cong alliance, we may expect corresponding polarization of votes among voters of majority community too. Besides that Delhi's majority of voters continue to look at Modi as preferred choice for centre and nationalist sentiments after Pulwama attack continue to dominate mood of voters.
In a nutshell, although AAP-Cong alliance may pose serious challenge for BJP in Delhi;however, ultimately BJP may win almost all the seats in Delhi, albeit with reduced margins.
