New Delhi: The troubles in the crisis-prone Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are far from over. Senior leader Prashant Bhushan has offered to quit all posts if the party fails to address his demands that he says are in the larger interest of the party.
Bhushan, along with another senior leader Yogendra Yadav, was sacked from the AAP Political Affairs Committee (PAC), the highest decision-making body of the party earlier this month and is currently a member of the AAP national executive.
In a letter addressed to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is also chief of the party, Bhushan listed four demands.
He called for the establishment of a strong mechanism for transparency in selection of candidates in the party to contest future elections, empowering state units to decide if they want to contest assembly and civic body lections in their own states, more involvement of volunteers in decision making process in the party and mechanism for clean donations and maintaining proper expenditure details.
Bhushan had opposed the nomination of some of the candidates by AAP alleging that he had concrete information that some of them had paid senior party leaders money to get nominated during last month’s Delhi state legislative assembly election.
The party was forced to change a number of candidates in view of such allegations on the last date of filing nominations.
Since both Bhushan and Yadav were sacked from the PAC, efforts had been launched within the party to get them expelled from AAP while Kejriwal himself was away for treatment at a Bengaluru-based naturopathy clinic.
Kejriwal however, on his return on Monday evening, expressed his unhappiness at constant exchange of spats in the public and delegated four senior colleagues to talk to both the estranged leaders.
There were reports in the media that Kejriwal may endorse their expulsions from the party and himself quit as convener of AAP, the post which makes him chief of the party at the AAP National Council that is likely to meet later this month.
However, besides engaging Yadav and Bhushan in dialogue to iron out differences with them, Kejriwal on Tuesday endorsed their demand to allow the party to expand its wings in other states.
The AAP PAC, which met on Tuesday evening has also decided to continue deliberations on the other issues raised by Bhushan and Yadav, dropping broad indications that the party is in no mood to precipitate the crisis considering issues raised by them were hurting the image of the party and Kejriwal himself.
Kejriwal and Yadav were virtually at loggerheads over allowing expansion of the party in other states.
While Kejriwal had publicly vowed to restrict himself and AAP to serving people of Delhi for the next five years, Yadav led the faction that wanted to use AAP’s historic victory in Delhi assembly poll to expand the party in other states.
He had identified Punjab, which is slated to elect its new state assembly in January 2017, as the most fertile land for itself. AAP had contested nearly 400 seats in the last summer general elections and won all its four seats in the Lok Sabha from Punjab itself.
“Deliberations at various levels will continue as volunteers are our backbone and their views will be incorporated in all future decisions so as to make the party more democratic and its decisions more transparent,” a senior leader of the AAP said.
