Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan Tried to Ensure We Lost Delhi Polls, Say AAP Leaders

NEW DELHI: Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were removed from a key decision-making panel of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) because they attempted to ensure the defeat of the party in the Delhi elections, four prominent AAP leaders have alleged.

The leaders, including party number two and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, have issued a statement to explain the removal of Mr Yadav and Mr Bhushan, founder members of the party. They said they were doing so to counter public statements being made by the two leaders.

They have accused Mr Bhushan of asking party leaders not to come to Delhi to campaign for AAP, and even attempting to stop donations to the party. It alleges that Mr Bhushan told party leaders that a defeat in the Delhi elections was “necessary to get Arvind Kejriwal to his senses.”
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Mr Yadav, the AAP leaders allege, “planted stories” and talked “off the record” to the media to discredit Aam Aadmi Party chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. They claim in their statement that AAP has “evidence” that Mr Yadav did this.
“It is good that those things that were being said through other people, the kind of allegations that were being made are now being made by some of the frontline leaders of the party. I think time has come for the whole country to know about the matter,” Mr Bhushan said today.
The point-wise charge-sheet issued by the AAP leaders today also names Mr Bhushan’s father, Shanti Bhushan, as having attempted to discredit the party. AAP took umbrage at Shanti Bhushan’s comment that Kiran Bedi, picked by rival BJP as its chief ministerial candidate to counter Mr Kejriwal in the February elections in Delhi, was a more worthy candidate.

“Party workers were astounded. They asked what he was doing in the Aam Aadmi Party if he felt this way,” says the statement, accusing Shanti Bhushan of also making several statements designed to tarnish the image of Arvind Kejriwal.

The sacking of Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav from the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) at a party meeting last week was the denouement of an intense war of words that revealed deep fissures in the Aam Aadmi Party just days after it swept the Delhi elections.

As Arvind Kejriwal left for Bangalore on a 10-day break, it was also clear that the fault lines in the party run deep, with another senior leader, Mayank Gandhi, questioning the manner on which Mr Yadav and Mr Bhushan were removed.