Six days after being expelled from party’s National Executive after a month-long fierce inter-party conflict, Aam Aadmi Party leader Prashant Bhushan has accused party convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of betraying the trust of people, in an open letter posted on NDTV.
“Arvind, this party was founded with a lot of idealism by thousands of people, especially young people, who came out and spent a lot of their time, effort, energy, money, sweat and blood in order to create a vehicle for alternative politics, in order to create a party that would practice clean and transparent politics,” Bhushan’s letter to Kejriwal reads.
“But unfortunately, all those principles are being betrayed by you and your coterie, who are currently in control of the party. And it has become a supremo-oriented, high-command culture kind of party.”
The letter further states what transpired during the National Council Meeting on March 28 in which, “all sorts of false and inflammatory allegations,” were made against him and Yogendra Yadav. Bhushan alleges that the duo was not allowed to respond to the allegations.
Hitting directly at AAP’s national convener, Bhushan accuses Kejriwal of “inciting” members in the meeting and says that they were labelled as “gaddars”. He adds that tempers ran so high in the meeting that his father, Shanti Bhushan “felt that he may not get out of this alive”.
In the letter, Bhushan also makes references to procedure followed for the selection of candidates for Delhi elections stating there was no transparency in the process.
In another letter published on March 17, Yadav and Bhushan, who were battling for the cause of volunteers in the party and campaigning for party’s expansion to other states, had offered to resign if their demands were not met.
Bhushan’s letter is no doubt damning and raises questions on how Arvind Kejriwal is controlling the party and whether ‘Swarajya’ as envisioned by AAP is now truly dead and buried.