 "Farmers Protest")
The Aam Aadmi Party on Wednesday alleged the BJP planted its "stooge", actor Deep Sidhu, to create "chaos" during farmers' tractor parade in Delhi on Republic Day.
The Delhi BJP, on the other hand, alleged that one Amrik Singh Micky, who was present at the Red Fort and later posted his picture with provocative slogan in Facebook, was an AAP leader.
The tractor parade on Tuesday that was to highlight the demands of the farmer unions to repeal the three new agriculture laws descended into anarchy as tens of thousands of protesters broke through barriers, fought with police, overturned vehicles and hoisted a religious flag from the ramparts of the iconic Red Fort.
Clashes broke out in multiple places, leading to violence in well-known landmarks of Delhi and its suburbs, amid waves of violence that ebbed and flowed through the Republic Day.
Punjabi actor Deep Sidhu has been blamed by the farmer union leaders and politicians for inciting violence during the tractor rally.
At a press conference, AAP spokesperson Raghav Chadha, while questioning the connection between Sidhu and BJP, showed several photos purportedly of the actor with various BJP leaders.
"The BJP planted their stooge Deep Sidhu to create chaos in farmers' tractor parade," Chadha said, adding, "BJP agent Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta are defaming the AAP in a very planned manner."
Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor has alleged, "Amrik Singh Micky joined the AAP before 2020 Delhi Assembly elections at hands of MP Sanjay Singh and vocally campaigned for AAP candidate from Tilak Nagar Jarnail Singh in 2020 and since then close to AAP's Punjab MP Bhagwant Maan too."
Amrik Singh is actively involved in the AAP's organisational activities, he claimed.
About the BJP's allegation, Chadha said, "With all responsibilities, the person has no connection with the AAP. He is neither a member nor an office-bearer of the AAP."
"The AAP condemns the witch hunt against the farmer leaders by the Delhi Police. It also demands that the Delhi police immediately arrest the people behind yesterday's violence and not to harass the farmer leaders," Chadha said.
The AAP believes that the farmer leaders have no role in the violence but the "BJP sleeper cell people" were involved with this incident, he alleged.
Deep Sidhu was among protesters at the Red Fort where flags were put up.
He was an aide of Deol when the latter contested from the Gurdaspur seat in Punjab during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Deol, who is now a BJP MP, had distanced himself from Sidhu in December last year after he joined the farmers'' agitation.
Amid a massive outrage over protesters hoisting a religious flag at the Red Fort during the tractor rally on Republic Day, Sidhu defended their action, saying they did not remove the national flag and had put up the ''Nishan Sahib'' as a symbolic protest.
The 'Nishan Sahib' flag, a symbol of Sikh religion, is seen at all gurdwara complexes.
In a video posted on Facebook on Tuesday evening, Sidhu had claimed that it was not a planned move and that they should not be given any communal colour or dubbed as fundamentalists or hardliners.
He had also stated that the national flag was not removed from the flagpole at the Red Fort and that nobody raised a question over the country's unity and integrity.
Sidhu, who had been associated with the farmers'' agitation for the last many months, said "anger flares up" in a mass movement like this when the genuine rights of people are ignored.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
