New Delhi: Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday shunted out senior leader Yogendra Yadav from its highest decision-making body.
The decision to remove Yadav from the nine-member Political Affairs Committee (PAC) was taken at a meeting of the party’s National Executive. Besides being shunted out of the PAC, Yadav would cease to be chief spokesperson of the party.
The AAP National Executive met in the absence of party chief Arvind Kejriwal who opted to keep away from the meeting and instead sent his resignation as national convener of AAP — the post that makes him supreme leader of the party.
This is the second time in last one week Kejriwal sent in his resignation as AAP convener. He had kept away from the National Executive meeting held on February 26 and offered to quit. His resignation was then rejected by the party.
Kejriwal in the resignation letter that he sent to AAP national executive on Wednesday morning said that he was over burdened with work as the Delhi chief minister and would not be able to handle both jobs efficiently.
It is not yet known whether the national executive accepted his offer to quit. Kejriwal is set to fly off to Bengaluru for 10 days on Thursday morning for treatment at a naturopathy institute for diabetes and repeated bouts of coughing.
The national executive meeting was convened in the wake of repeated attacks on Kejriwal by foundering leaders Yadav and Prashant Bhushan.
The national executive decided not to remove Bhushan from the PAC in a bid to drive a wedge between Yadav and Bhushan, who together had the potential to create problems for AAP and Kejriwal.
The two leaders had accused Kejriwal of imposing his decisions on the party and total breakdown of internal communication in the party. They wanted Kejriwal to quit as AAP convener saying holding top two posts was akin to promoting a personality cult, which is against the AAP ideology.
Kejriwal took over as Delhi chief minister last month following the party’s landslide victory in which AAP won 67-seats in the 70 member Delhi state legislative assembly.
AAP plunged into a crisis within less than a month of its historic victory in Delhi mainly over alleged ambitions of Yadav to replace Kejriwal as the party chief and spread the wings of AAP in other states.
Close aides of Kejriwal had accused Yadav of misguiding Kejriwal last year when he accepted Yadav’s suggestion to quit as the Delhi chief minister and contest general elections from nearly 400 seats.
AAP fell flat on its face as Kejriwal, Yadav and all its senior leaders tasted defeats with the party managing to win just four seats — all from the northern state Punjab.
Kejriwal after taking oath as Delhi chief minister on February 14 for the second time had declared that AAP would focus on governance in Delhi for the next five years while Yadav openly talked about taking AAP to four other states which was seen as going against the party line enunciated by Kejriwal.
Although reconciliatory attempts were made all through Tuesday, it became clear by the time the national executive meeting started that the rift had widened beyond repairs between Kejriwal and Yadav. Yadav in a tweet on Wednesday termed the situation as an opportunity for the party and declared that he would not break the party or quit.
Kejriwal had on Tuesday tweeted to say that he was deeply hurt by the going on in the party and refused to get drawn in what he termed as an ugly battle. However, sources in AAP say that even though Kejriwal deliberately skipped Wednesday’s meeting, he had pre-planned the outcome and the national executive merely put its stamp of confirmation on it.
