With the Bihar assembly elections just a few months away, political developments have gained momentum. Aam Aadmi Party chief and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has announced that the Aam Aadmi Party will contest the Bihar assembly elections independently without any alliance. Therefore, this is being considered a big setback for the India Alliance on the eve of the elections.

Kejriwal, who is on a Gujarat tour, interacted with the media during the inauguration of the party’s membership drive in Ahmedabad. On this occasion, citing the recently held Visavadar by-election, he said that ‘AAP’ has won by a margin of three times the votes by contesting the election separately from the Congress. This is a clear response of the people that ‘AAP’ is now standing before the people as a strong option, he expressed his belief.

Kejriwal took a direct aim at the Congress and said, “The INDIA alliance was limited to the Lok Sabha elections only. Now AAP has no alliance with the Congress. If there was an alliance, why would the Congress have fielded a candidate against us in the Visavadar by-election in Gujarat? The Congress was sent by the BJP to split AAP’s votes,” he claimed.

“The relationship between BJP and Congress is like that of a lover – they meet secretly at night,” he alleged. In the Visavadar by-election, AAP candidate Gopal Italia defeated BJP’s Kirit Patel by 17,581 votes, while the Congress came in third. After this victory, AAP has started increasing its strength in Gujarat as well.

Talking about Gujarat, Kejriwal said, “AAP will fight with full strength in Gujarat and will win. In politics, there are victories and defeats. But our confidence remains intact. I am fully confident that our government will come back to power in Punjab. We have done a good job there.”

With this announcement by Kejriwal, the AAP party is now adopting an independent strategy at the national level. AAP is trying to establish its own identity, keeping a distance from the Congress or other opposition parties. The country’s attention is on how the AAP will perform in the upcoming Bihar and Gujarat assembly elections.

Assembly elections are likely to be held in Bihar between October-November 2025. In the previous elections, the NDA had formed the government by winning 125 out of 243 seats. However, later, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar left the BJP and formed a grand alliance government with the RJD. However, in January 2024, Nitish Kumar once again made a major political comeback, left the RJD, returned to the NDA and formed the government with the BJP. Therefore, while a fight between the NDA and the INDIA bloc is expected in Bihar in the upcoming elections, the decision of AAP to stay out of the alliance is likely to upset the opposition’s calculations.