The fierce infighting which has plagued the Aam Aadmi Party for the last two weeks does not look to abate any time soon.
In a statement, four senior leaders have slammed Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, accusing them of working to defeat the party during the Delhi Assembly elections and malign the image of Arvind Kejriwal.
The statement issued by senior leaders Manish Sisodia, Gopal Rai, Pankaj Gupta and Sanjay Singh lists out the reasons as to why Yadav and Bhushan were ousted from the party’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC) — a key decision-making panel.
“When AAP volunteers were busy working hard to ensure the party’s victory in Delhi polls, three leaders — Yadav, Bhushan and Shanti Bhushan — were bent on defeating it,” the statement, which is in Hindi, read.
It goes on to say that Prashant Bhushan tried his level best to dissuade volunteers from other states to come to Delhi to campaign for the party and even prevented donors from contributing to the party fund.
The statement also alleges that Yadav deliberately planted stories in the media to malign the image of Kejriwal. It cited the instance of an article in The Hindu in which a negative portrayal of Kejriwal and the party was carried out at the behest of Yadav, who had reportedly called for an informal meeting with select journalists.
The AAP, which cruised to a historic victory in the February Delhi polls, has seen a massive internal rebellion with a majority of the leaders supporting Kejriwal. The controversy had first risen in the last week of February when allegations flew that Yadav and Bhushan were conspiring to remove Kejriwal from the national convenor’s post. Subsequently in the national executive meeting on March 4, both leaders were pushed out of the PAC on charges of indulging in ‘anti-party’ activities. Last week, senior leader Mayank Gandhi added fuel to the fire and wrote in a blog post that the manner in which Yadav and Bhushan were unceremoniously shunted out of the PAC was not right and that Kejriwal wanted both leaders out of the decision-making panel.
