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“We are ready to form the government, but the Congress is not ready to support us. Manish (Sisodia) is in touch with the Congress. Do one thing, split the Congress and ask their six MLAs to float a new party and support us,” Kejriwal was purportedly heard saying in a telephonic conversation with former AAP MLA Rajesh Garg after the party’s defeat in all the Delhi seats in the Lok Sabha elections.
“Congress won’t support us. We have been trying for the past one and a half months. These six Congress MLAs would have supported the BJP, but three of them are Muslims. They won’t support the BJP. Those six MLAs should support us,” Kejriwal purportedly told Garg in the audio clip.
AAP justified the charges of horse-trading by terming it as “political re-alignment”, and said there was nothing “illegal and immoral” for the party to be in touch with the Congress MLAs for support. “Terming it as horse-trading is far too harsh and irresponsible. We neither lured them with money nor did we offer them with any gains. Political realignments are not new in this country. Political realignment is not poaching. It is a truth in the country while horse-trading is fallacious,” AAP leader Ashish Khetan told reporters here.
However, senior party leaders Yadav and Bhushan, who were voted out of AAP’s political affairs committee last week, issued a joint statement to not only refute charges of anti-party activities but also to say Kejriwal was ‘adamant’ about forming a government in Delhi with the support of the Congress after the Lok Sabha elections.
The duo said they opposed Kejriwal’s ‘unilateral decisions’, including his plan to form a government with the Congress support. They said Kejriwal went ahead with his efforts to form the government and he continued till a month prior to the elections. The leaders said, after the Lok Sabha elections, three leaders Manish Sisodia, Ashutosh and Sanjay Singh had demanded the resignation of all the PAC members be handed over to Kejriwal so that he elects a fresh team. “We had strongly protested this along with other leaders. Had we accepted this unconstitutional demand, what would have been the difference between our party and the BJP and Congress?” the two leaders stated in their open letter.
Among other things, the duo leaders said, they had protested against selection of candidates and opposed the decision to not contest in the other Assembly elections and the efforts to join hands with Congress to form a government in Delhi after the Lok Sabha elections.
One of the AAP MLAs, Kapil Mishra, launched a signature campaign on Wednesday to demand that Bhushan, his father Shanti Bhushan and Yadav be thrown out of the party.
"I quit...I have not come into AAP for this nonsense. I believed him...I backed Arvind for principles not horse-trading," Damania ‘tweeted’.
