New Delhi/IBNS: Congress has come out with a clarification after one of its leaders' statement on preparing to contest all Lok Sabha seats in Delhi irked Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the ruling party of the national capital and a constituent of the newly-formed anti-Modi bloc INDIA, media reports said.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge and party MP Rahul Gandhi held a four-hour meeting with their senior colleagues in Delhi earlier in the evening, where they broadly cussed strategies for the big fight in the 2024 General Elections.

After the meeting, Congress leader Alka Lamba said they have been asked to prepare to contest in all the seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital.

"We have been told how to prepare for the 2024 election. Before the Delhi meeting, the leadership has met our people in 18 states. It has been decided that all Congress leaders will immediately go to work on the seven seats in Delhi to win them," Lamba told news agency ANI.

"Seven months are left. All party workers have been asked to prepare for all seven seats," she said.

Soon after the statement was made, the Aam Aadmi Party, a member of the newly formed opposition bloc INDIA, questioned the need for the alliance if all parties decided to go solo.

Deepak Babaria, the Congress's in-charge of Delhi, stepped in to clarify after the AAP expressed "surprise".

Babaria said the comment was the leader's (Ms Lamba's) opinion and no plan for seat-sharing was discussed in the meeting.

"We did not discuss that issue in today's meeting. The discussion was about how to strengthen the party in Delhi," he said.

Though AAP had a sweeping victory in the last assembly elections in Delhi, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's party had failed to open its account in the 2019 General Elections where all seven seats were won by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).