AAP heads for major showdown as rival camps trade allegations

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Within hours of the Yadav-Bhushan press conference, the Kejriwal camp, comprising of Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh and Ashish Khetan hit back saying that the Yadav-Bhushan duo are engaged in discrediting the party with baseless allegations.

“They will say something inside the meeting and something else outside in front of the media,” said Singh.

Singh added that the AAP leadership has tried hard to ‘save the family’. He alleged that despite productive talks for several days, Yadav-Bhushan said that they did not have faith in the party.

The press conference comes amidst reports that both leaders would be asked to resign from the 400-member national executive body at the meeting tomorrow. The party, which swept to power in Delhi with a landslide mandate in February, has been hit by an internal crisis which threatens to split the party. It all started in the last week of February when allegations rose that Bhushan and Yadav wanted to remove Kejriwal from the national convenor’s post. In the weeks that followed, both leaders were shunted out of the party’s key decision making panel (PAC) signalling that Kejriwal remains in firm and complete control of the party. The rift has seen several leaders attacking each other on social media, making disclosures and producing stings to expose each other.

“We had sent a note to the party placing our demands which is now being shown as our resignation letter. Whereas it was a conditional letter to resign. We had said if our five demands are met, we will resign from all party posts,” Yadav said at the press conference.

Bhushan slammed Kejriwal for allegedly trying to poach Congress MLAs to form government in Delhi last year.

“The National Executive had rejected a proposal to form government taking support of Congress. Despite that, Kejriwal sent a letter to Lt Governor asking him not to dissolve the assembly,” Bhushan said.

He went on to say that Kejriwal does not want to continue working with them and therefore wants them to resign. Citing interlocutors, Bhushan alleged that if they did not resign, Kejriwal would much rather form his own party with the 67 Delhi legislators.

“We have written a fresh letter demanding an orderly national executive meeting on Saturday,” Bhushan said. He also requested the party that the meeting be videographed.

Kejriwal meanwhile has maintained silence over the issue today.

(with PTI inputs)