Lashing out at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for supporting his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar, Swaraj Abhiyan today said offering support to the JD(U)-RJD alliance is a "gross betrayal" of the sentiments of the anti-graft Jan Lokpal movement.
Attacking Kejriwal, Swaraj Abhiyan, formed by activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav after being expelled from AAP, said the leader of the party which used to paint the whole political system as "corrupt" now grants a certificate of honesty to a major player of that very political system.
"The party which emerged out of an unprecedented nationwide anti-corruption movement is now on its way to becoming one more lug in the well-oiled machine of corrupt politics.
"Citing Nitish Kumar's personal honesty in support of this step is right out of the Congress playbook, when they used to try and hide the greatest scams on earth behind Manmohan Singh's so-called personal honesty. The truth is that just as Manmohan Singh was the symbol of a corrupt government," the Swaraj Abhiyan said in its statement.
It said that Nitish Kumar is the face of an alliance in which the RJD of Lalu Yadav and the Congress are his principal partners. The RJD and JDU have divided 100-100 seats among themselves, with 40 for the Congress party.
"Offering electoral support to such an alliance is a gross betrayal of the sentiments of the anti-corruption Jan Lokpal movement. Let us not forget that equal partner in this alliance, Lalu Yadav has been convicted and sentenced in the fodder scam.
"And those citing secularism as their justification for supporting this corrupt combine would do well to remember that Nitish Kumar was a cabinet minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government which failed to act against the 2002 riots in Gujarat," the statement added.
Yesterday, Kejriwal extended full support to Kumar's bid for another shot at power as the two leaders attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for announcing a Rs 1.25 lakh crore package for the election-bound state.
