AAP, TMC mull alliance for Goa polls

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) are working on modalities to fight the February 2022 Goa election in an alliance. While AAP has experience of contesting in Goa in the past when it got 6% votes in the 2017 election, the TMC is contesting these elections for the first time.
Apart from the fact that both these parties are trying to emerge as a third option to the BJP and the Congress in the state, the other common factor between them is that political consulting agency I-PAC has been associated with both these parties and has helped them in their election campaign in Delhi and West Bengal respectively.
Employees of I-PAC are already working on the ground for TMC in Goa. The response received from the ground, which suggest that TMC is not making much impact among the voters, has led to the TMC leadership, on the prodding of its political advisors, to mull the option of tying up with the AAP, which has been active in the state for 3-4 years and has more credibility among the people of Goa.
Goa-based political observers told The Sunday Guardian that if the AAP contests all the 40 seats, then the chances of it winning on at least one-fourth of them, if not more, were “bright”, as some of its candidates have spent a lot of time among the people of Goa, especially during the Covid-19 times, and this has generated a lot of political goodwill for them.
“The task is to convince the leadership of both these parties to reach an amicable seat sharing arrangement in which AAP will have to limit itself to 25-30 seats, with the rest being contested by the TMC and this is where I-PAC will come in and convince the leadership of these two parties,” a source aware of the developments told The Sunday Guardian.
The Sunday Guardian’s message to TMC MP Mahua Moitra, who is in charge of Goa, and messages to Durgesh Pathak, AAP leader who is active in Goa, seeking their response on a possible tie-up between the two parties, elicited no response till the time the story went to press.
However, Rahul Mhambre, AAP Goa convener, denied such developments taking place. “No such discussion for tie-up is in progress,” he said.