AAP crisis deepens as truce talks fail

Ananya Panda

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 26

The Aam Aadmi Party seems to be headed for a split with reconciliation talks between the two warring factions coming to a naught today after senior leaders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan accused AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal and his loyalists of forcing them to step down from party’s national executive.

In an open letter addressed to Kejriwal two days ahead of AAP’s crucial national council meeting, Bhushan and Yadav said the message conveyed to them during the talks was that they should either resign gracefully or face removal from the national executive.

Kejriwal loyalists, however, slammed the two for the dissent, claiming they had agreed to resign provided the five demands/concerns about the party raised by them were met/addressed while referring to their March 17 letter on which the negotiations were based. The two had earlier denied the existence of any such letter of resignation.

Party sources said Kejriwal had insisted on their removal to carry on party activities following which negotiations for truce went on between both sides until the last-ditch efforts by party Lokpal Admiral Ramdas failed.

Kejriwal supporters today said Bhushan and Yadav set a condition that the Delhi CM be removed from the post of the AAP national convener.

Party leader Kumar Vishwas said: “Yadav and Bhushan had offered their resignation on March 17 on five conditions. AAP accepted all their demands but they did not resign. Now they are demanding removal of Kejriwal as the national convener.”

Vishwas said the call on Kejriwal’s continuance as AAP leader would be taken at the council meeting on March 28.

“Slowly it dawned upon us that the principle intent of these talks is to secure our resignation. The bottom line for interlocutors from your side was that the two of us must resign from the national executive. We were told that this is your personal insistence. We were told that you are not willing to be the national convenor as long as the two of us are members of national executive,” read the open letter.

Party leader Ashish Khetan later in the evening said Bhushan and Yadav were bent upon weakening Kejriwal. “Yogendra Yadav publicly says something else and privately says another,” he said.

“Talks with PB (Prashant Bhushan) and YY (Yogendra Yadav) failed. They insist on removing AK (Arvind Kejriwal) from National Convener post. NC (national council) to decide on July 28 weather to remove AK or not,” tweeted Manish Sisodia, a Kejriwal confidant and Delhi Deputy CM.

Yadav and Bhushan were on March 4 unceremoniously removed from the party’s powerful Political Affairs Committee after Kejriwal stuck to his stand.