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Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal had on Saturday admitted that AAP had made ‘mistakes’ and that there was a need to ‘introspect’ and ‘course correct’.
Delhi: Reacting to reports of a divide within the Aam Aadmi Party after the MCD elections, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Monday that party leader Kumar Vishwas was his younger brother and nobody could separate them.
AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan had alleged that Kumar Vishwas was conspiring to break the party and had asked some legislators to join the BJP with an offer of Rs 30 crore each.
Khan had circulated a WhatsApp message saying Kumar Vishwas had called some AAP MLAs to his home with the monetary offer at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“Kumar Vishwas called some MLAS and asked them that he should be made the party convenor,” legislator from Okhla in south Delhi had said, as per IANS.
The four MLAs also held a meeting with an unnamed minister, Khan had said, citing ten unnamed MLAs who “revealed this to me”.
On April 28, Vishwas, a member of party’s top decision-making body, the political affairs committee, had said that there had been a “communication gap” between the party, its volunteers and voters and had added that the AAP was getting ‘congressionised’ to an extent.
The poet-turned-politician had said in an interview to a TV channel, “There has been a communication gap between volunteers and the party leadership. We should first decide whom did we start our fight with. (Is it) corruption, the Congress, Narendra Modi or the EVMs? Should we run a campaign to change electoral process. Problems in the EVMs are a part of elections. It be should be questioned.
The AAP leader had further said that with the poll results it had also become “obvious” that people had not voted for the AAP.
“By and large, we could not convey our point to people and there was a big communication gap. We could not convince people about work done by the Delhi government did,” the AAP leader had said, as per PTI.
Vishwas is not the only AAP leader to differ with the party leadership’s view on EVMs. Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra and party MP from Sangrur Bhagwant Mann also hold a contrarian viewpoint.
Kejriwal has been alleging tampering of EVMs behind party’s defeat in MCD polls and Punjab state elections. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Labour Minister Gopal Rai have also said voting machines were “rigged”.
Yesterday, Kejriwal himself admitted that AAP had made “mistakes” and that there was a need to “introspect” and “course correct”.
Kejriwal had said that based on his interactions with “volunteers and voters”, it was obvious that the party had made mistakes and there was a need to go back to the “drawing board”.
“Need is action and not excuses,” he said, amid growing clamour in the party to desist from raking up the issue of EVMs being “tampered with” to favour the BJP, an allegation rubbished by the Election Commission.
The remarks were part of a brief written statement, shared by the AAP chief on Twitter, three days after the party was defeated by the BJP in the Delhi municipal polls.
“In the last two days, I spoke to many volunteers and voters. The reality is obvious. Yes, we made mistakes but we will introspect and course correct. Time to go back to drawing board,” he has said.
He had added that it would be “silly” for the party to not evolve.
AAP was formed in late 2012, after the India Against Corruption movement led by Kejriwal and veteran activist Anna Hazare.
The party stormed to power in Delhi with an overwhelming majority of 67 seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly in 2015, gaining prominence in the national stage.
Since then, it has focused on expanding its base beyond the national capital, but its foray in Punjab and Goa failed, and the party has also lost its grip over the national capital in the recent past.
In Punjab, the party did emerge as the primary Opposition but the performance did not live up to the hype.
In Delhi, the party first lost the Rajouri Garden assembly bypoll and within days, received a drubbing in the civic elections, where the BJP retained control of all the three corporations.
