AAP council may oust Yadav, Bhushan today

New Delhi, March 27

An all-out war erupted in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today with the Arvind Kejriwal camp and dissident leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav attacking each other ahead of tomorrow's crucial national council meet that is likely to remove the two from the party.

Though the allegations and counter-allegations flew thick and fast, the party chief and Delhi Chief Minister maintained silence.

As the warring factions engaged in a no-holds-barred attack on each other, an audio tape surfaced in which Kejriwal purportedly used expletives against Bhushan and Yadav during a conversation with AAP volunteer Umesh Singh. He was also heard threatening to float a new party in the tape which was described by AAP as another conspiracy to malign Kejriwal.

At a press conference called in the Capital today on the brewing feud within the party, Bhushan termed Kejriwal’s style of functioning dictatorial and said the AAP chief was keen on running the Delhi Government with the Congress’ support last year. The AAP hit back, accusing the two men of having tried to sabotage the party in the run-up to the Delhi polls last month which it won with huge margin.

“They made efforts so that party loses... they told workers that let the party lose, it will be easy to remove Arvind,” AAP leader Ashish Khetan said.

Kejriwal, on whose insistence Yadav and Bhusan were ousted from the party’s Political Affairs Committee on March 4, had reportedly told Bhushan that he did not like when anyone differed with him or told him his way might be wrong. “I had told Arvind earlier that he has weaknesses that can destroy the party. He even admitted never being at a place where people disagreed with him,” Bhushan said.

AAP senior leader Prof Anand Kumar said: “Amid all this chaos, one man (Arvind Kejriwal) is silent. The Chandrgupta Maurya of our struggle! It is unfortunate that we are talking to him through a press conference.” Kumar, who was accompanied by Prof Ajit Jha — both members of the party’s national executive — were defending the two AAP rebels whom they had represented during the nearly 10-day negotiations for truce.

They also contested the Kejriwal camp’s claim that the duo had objected to Kejriwal’s continuance as the national convener. “Lies are being spread about them in propaganda,” Kumar said.

Expressing fear about an open confrontation, the Yadav and Bhushan camp demanded that the national council proceedings be webcast and voting to fill the vacancies in the national executive (NE) be through a secret ballot. They also wanted the party’s internal lokpal to convene the meeting.

Bhushan alleged that the Delhi MLAs had been invited for tomorrow’s meeting and told to get supporters along in a show of strength. “The meeting should be held in a civilised manner and should be videographed. Earlier, all top bodies’ meetings of the party used to be recorded but the practice has been discontinued.” 

On resignation, Yadav said: “There’s a difference between a conditional resignation and a resignation letter. If all five issues we raised in our letter dated March 17 are addressed, we will immediately resign.”

The duo had offered to resign from the NE and other party posts on five conditions — states be empowered to take call on local body elections, voluntary adherence to RTI as mandated by the CIC, probe into all four recent allegations against the party be handed over to the party’s National Lokpal, appointment of Lokayukts in states, and space for volunteers’ views besides election of remaining NE members through secret ballot.