With the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress stitching up an alliance in the Chandigarh mayoral elections scheduled for January 18, the Union Territory will see the first formal agreement between Opposition INDIA bloc partners in the country.

As part of the tie-up, the AAP will fight for the mayor’s seat, while the Congress will contest for the senior deputy mayor and deputy mayor posts. Currently, all three posts are held by the BJP.

The alliance assumes significance as the parties are now hoping it could set the tone for Lok Sabha elections.

Raghav Chadha, the AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP, hailed the alliance on Tuesday while speaking to reporters in Delhi. “The INDIA alliance will fight the Chandigarh mayoral elections with all its strength and register a historic and decisive victory. Do not consider this an ordinary election. This will be an election where for the first time it will be INDIA vs BJP. After this election, the scorecard will be INDIA 1, BJP 0. We think that the clean sweep on January 18 will be the beginning for the Lok Sabha election,” Chadha said.

Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, while announcing the alliance on Monday, had written in a post on X, “Congress and AAP in Chandigarh have become the first constituents of INDIA parties to implement the decisions and sentiments of INDIA to not let the BJP win elections by default… And together we will win all the three positions, thus heralding the end of BJP’s anti-democracy rule in the country.”

Bansal told The Indian Express that the alliance was struck to minimise the BJP in the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation. “We never opposed this alliance in Chandigarh. We felt that the (mayor seat) went to the BJP by default at least twice. Ever since the INDIA bloc came into being, we were looking at coming together wherever it was possible, that we should not let the BJP come back by default.”

Since the 2021 municipal corporation elections – in which the AAP won 14 seats, the BJP 12 and the Congress eight – several councillors have switched to the BJP. In the 2022 mayoral polls, when the Congress abstained from voting, the BJP won by just one vote after an AAP member’s vote was declared invalid.

Currently, the 13 and 7 councillors in the AAP and Congress, respectively, outnumber the BJP’s 15, putting the alliance members in a winning position for all three mayoral posts. Mayors are elected for one-year terms by the 35 elected councillors and the Chandigarh Lok Sabha MP.

All eyes are now on the other states where the AAP and Congress are in seat-sharing negotiations. Punjab, in particular, has seen stiff resistance from the parties’ state units towards an alliance for the 13 Lok Sabha seats. In Delhi, reports suggest the AAP has agreed to contest four seats and leave the remaining three to the Congress. No decisions have been made for Haryana, Gujarat and Goa.

While Bansal was reluctant to comment on whether the Congress and AAP would ally in Punjab, the AAP’s Chandigarh in-charge Jarnail Singh said the alliance for the mayoral elections “will pave the path for the both parties to fight the general election together in Punjab, Chandigarh and Haryana to defeat the BJP”.

Bansal, however, said, “I cannot hazard a final outcome in Punjab. Our friends in Punjab are opposed to this. The Congress is a democratic party. Views of all stakeholders are considered. Presently, I am not in Delhi. The five-member (national alliance) committee is discussing the issue.”

Partap Singh Bajwa, Congress MLA and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, said the party had already made its stand clear. “We do not want an alliance with the AAP in Punjab. This is our final decision.”

Sources said while most local leaders had told Punjab Congress affairs in-charge Devender Yadav that they did not want an alliance, the Congress MPs were in favour.

While the AAP has one sitting MP, the Congress has six, excluding Patialia MP Preneet Kaur, wife of former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who was suspended from the party last year. The BJP has two MPs.

If an alliance is struck in Punjab, the AAP would get seven seats and the Congress the remaining six in addition to the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat, sources said. “That way both the Congress and AAP will have seven seats each. That is how the Congress has given the Chandigarh mayor seat to the AAP,” a source in the Congress said.

However, the Congress camp maintained that an alliance in Punjab was out of the question. “They may come together in Haryana, Goa, Gujarat and other states but not here. Just look at the vendetta the AAP has unleashed on us,” said a party leader, referring to Congress Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira, who was arrested by the Punjab Police last year in a 2015 narcotics case and subsequently faced charges of criminal intimidation. He has been granted bail in both cases but his arrest became a point of contention for the parties.

Last week, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, in a post on X, had suggested the AAP may go it alone in Punjab. “(AAP national convener) Arvind Kejriwal, the torch of honest and transparent politics that you are holding is bringing light to Punjab. That is how Punjab will become a hero. This time 13-0. Long live the revolution,” he said. Before this though, Mann had also supported the INDIA bloc coming together against the BJP.