Rahul Gandhi refused to forge alliance with AAP for LS polls: Kejriwal
Vishakhanpatnam: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal Monday said that Congress President Rahul Gandhi has refused to forge an alliance with the AAP for the Lok Sabha polls in the national capital.
Talking to reporters at the airport here, the AAP leader said he had met Gandhi recently and the Congress leader had refused to join hands with the AAP .
Asked about Congress' Delhi unit president Sheila Dikshit's remarks that Kejriwal never approached her for an alliance, the chief minister said, We have met Rahul Gandhi. Dikshit is not that important leader.
Kejriwal has been urging the Congress to stitch an alliance in Delhi for the Lok Sabha polls to keep the BJP away from power.
Leaders in the Delhi unit of the Congress were divided over the issue of alliance with Dikshit and her three working presidents opposing it, party sources had said.
A top source in the party had recently said that chances of alliance were "slim" considering its long term repercussions in Delhi.
"The biggest question is how will Congress face the AAP in Assembly elections due in 2020 after the tie up. Also, the party does not gain much politically as it is being offered only 2-3 seats by Kejriwal," the source had said.
Congress had drawn a blank in the 2014 parliamentary elections in Delhi.
The talk of alliance was fuelled by the fact that the Congress and AAP had jointly polled more votes than the BJP that had walked away with all the seven seats in the national capital.
Delhi has 7 Lok Sabha seats and it will go to polls on May 12
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
