Harsh Vardhan questions AAP on support from Congress

BJP leader Harsh Vardhan Thursday questioned the Aam Aadmi Party as to what "compelled" the debutant political entity to form a government in Delhi with the Congress party's support.

"When his (Arvind Kejriwal's) party emerged, people of this country saw new hope. Though the party emerged due to Anna Hazare's movement, Anna Hazare decided to stay out of politics," said BJP's chief ministerial candidate Harsh Vardhan during a debate on the trust vote in the Delhi assembly.

"Arvind Kejriwal had sworn that he would neither support nor take the support of the Congress party. I don't know what compelled him to seek support from the Congress - a party that was shown the door by the people in elections," he said.

Referring to the earlier speech by Delhi Minister Manish Sisodia that the assembly was the representative of the people of Delhi, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader said: "Why are they (AAP) negating the mandate of the people and taking the Congress party's support."

The Aam Aadmi Party assumed power Saturday on the strength of its 28 seats in the 70-member Delhi assembly. The Congress, with eight legislators, has declared its support to the Kejriwal government.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, with 32 members, is the single largest party in the assembly.

Harsh Vardhan said: "In the 15 years of Congress rule, there have been many scams. Our party kept highlighting these. I heard Kejriwal saying if Harsh Vardhan had any evidence, he should share it with us. I want to ask the chief minister, why he claimed that he would act against the corrupt people in Congress if he had no evidence?"

He questioned the decision of the AAP government to ban red beacons for Delhi MLAs saying the Supreme Court order on this was a year old.

"But the manner in which you presented facts here made it seem that the onus of cleaning up politics lay only with you," he said.

"You (Kejriwal) didn't want security, but at least 4,000 policemen were deployed for your security at the Ram Lila Maidan," he said.

The BJP leader said there was nothing special about the chief minister using the metro to travel as thousands of security personnel had to be deployed for this.

Harsh Vardhan said: "We (BJP) are also for clean politics, but do we need to demonstrate it in this manner?"