NEW DELHI: The simmering strife within Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) reached boiling point on Monday with its senior leaders coming out in the open accusing each other of trying to weaken the party.

Founder leaders and advisers of the Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who also heads the fledgling party, namely Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, were the target of attacks by what they termed the coterie around Kejriwal.

Kejriwal has convened a meeting of the party’s apex decision-making body Political Affairs Committee (PAC) Wednesday to discuss the emerging situation. With 15 out of 21 PAC members advocating dismissal of Yadav and Bhushan, in all likelihood the dissenting duo will be dropped from PAC.

The allegations against them is that they are working against the party, especially Kejriwal and constantly leaking internal communications of the party to the media in a bid to paint AAP in poor light.

“The decisive churning in AAP. It’s clash of ideas between ultra left who demand referendum in Kashmir and pragmatic politics of welfarism,” senior AAP leader Ashutosh, considered close to Kejriwal tweeted Monday, virtually accepting that the internal strife had reached flash point.

Both Yadav and Bhushan are seen as leaders with the Left leanings.

AAP co-convener Durgesh Pathak went even further by accusing Yadav and Bhushan of conspiring against Kejriwal.

“I was shocked to know that Prashantji and Yogendraji wanted to lose Delhi polls,” Pathak said in an interview to news agency, explaining that they wanted to remove Kejriwal from the post of convener of AAP using Delhi polls as an excuse.

AAP under Kejriwal recorded a historic victory last month by bagging 67 seats in the 70-member Delhi state legislative assembly.

Bhushan’s father and another AAP founding member Shanti Bhushan had questioned Kejriwal’s style of functioning in the run up to Delhi polls and even saying rival Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kiran Bedi would prove to be a better chief minister to Kejriwal.

While Yadav termed speculation about their removal from PAC as “baseless allegations”, Bhushan termed the issues an internal matter of the party, saying he would rather not speak about these in public. “I wrote a letter to the National Executive to being about structural changes in the party. It should not be seen as a revolt,” Bhushan said.

However, in one of the letters written by Bhushan, leaked to the media by yet to be identified sources, Bhushan had raised questions about transparency within the party. He had questioned the one person-centric campaign of AAP in Delhi, saying AAP was made to look no different from other conventional parties.

“Running one (Kejriwal) person-centric campaign may be effective, but does not justify sacrificing our principles? We will need to make a conscious course correction if we have to get away from a supremo controlled party,” Bhushan had said in his letter.

The basic difference between Kejriwal and Yadav-Bhushan duo is over the party’s future. While Kejriwal wants to concentrate on governance in Delhi and is not keen on AAP’s expansion across India, Yadav and Bhushan are in favour of looking beyond and expand the party in other states. They have identified four states including Punjab where the party should start preparations to contest assembly elections in future.

AAP spokesman Sanjay Singh Monday announced PAC meeting on Wednesday and said that the constant leaks of letters by party members has made the party look like a joke.