Headlines
Bhushan, Yadav flay Kejriwal, say they want to save AAP
New Delhi, March 27
Saying they were trying to save the AAP, dissident leaders Prashant
Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav on Friday accused Chief Minister Arvind
Kejriwal of suppressing democracy within the party that now rules Delhi.
The
duo also said they were willing to give up all posts in the Aam Aadmi
Party (AAP) if their five demands -- including transparency within and
autonomy to local units -- were met by Kejriwal, whose loyalists have
accused the two of conspiring to oust the chief minister.
Bhushan
and Yadav addressed a press conference after Kejriwal supporters hit
out at the two overnight, claiming they had resigned from the AAP
National Executive, which is set to meet here on Saturday. Both denied
this.
“We have never made any attempt to dislodge Kejriwal from
his position in the party. The allegations.. that we wanted Kejriwal to
be removed from the post of national convenor of the party, are all
feeble and baseless,†said Yadav, a founder member of AAP.
The
main grouse of Bhushan and Yadav was that Kejriwal acted in an
autocratic manner and refused to pay heed to dissenting voices in a
party that was born in 2012 to give a new kind of politics to India.
“Yes,
we have warned and alerted Kejriwal against ill-advised and hasty moves
and had qestioned him. Is that a crime for a party built on the
principles of Swaraj? †asked Yadav.
A Supreme Court advocate
and an AAP founder, Bhushan alleged that Kejriwal wanted to form a
government in Delhi with Congress support last year though the latter
had been decisively rejected in the Lok Sabha elections.
He said
five of the nine leaders who attended a meeting of the party's Political
Affairs Committee (PAC), the highest decision making body, opposed the
idea.
"Arvind said that as the national convener, he had the
right to take the final decision and (that) he had decided to take
Congress' support to form the government in Delhi," Bhushan said.
"But
we protested and the issue went to the National Executive. There too
the majority rejected the idea," Bhushan said. "Arvind said he (had)
never worked in an organisation where his writ didn't run."
“We
sought time from Kejriwal to hold talks and settle the issues but to no
avail. We were not given an appointment to meet him to present our
side,†said Bhushan.
Yadav, a known political pundit, said he
and Bhushan were fighting to "save the soul of the struggle" that gave
birth to the AAP.
"It is not an ordinary party, it was born out
of a revolution to clean the system, end corruption and give power to
the common people," Yadav said.
"People have high hopes from this
party. But the developments in the last one month have disappointed
many. We are fighting to save the soul of the struggle that gave birth
to this party," he said.
Yadav said he and Bhushan had five
demands -- transparency in the AAP, autonomy for local units, a Lokpal
probe into graft charges against party members, AAP should come within
the ambit of the RTI, and an end to secret ballot during election to key
posts.
If Kejriwal was ready to accept these five demands, he and Bhushan would resign from all party posts, he said.
Since
storming to power in Delhi last month with a brute majority, the AAP
has been embroiled in an internal crisis that has pitted Bhushan and
Yadav against Kejriwal, the party's best known face.