AAP National Council meet begins, Admiral Ramdas told to skip to avoid confrontation

The AAP National Council meeting, which began at a resort in Kapashera here this morning, is expected to take a decision on the fate of founder-members Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan whose expulsion is being demanded by Arvind Kejriwal loyalists after talks between the warring factions failed.

Yadav made the letter public on social media ahead of the NC meet, saying that he conveyed his “apologies” and sought Ramdas’s permission in doing so.

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In the letter, Ramdas mentioned the SMS he had received from AAP General Secretary Pankaj Gupta, on which several reasons were stated by the party for its decision, as it was “party internal affair” and “as indicated earlier term of Lokpal need to be renewed in the next NE (National Executive meet)”.

Gupta also wrote that only MLAs and MPs have been invited apart from authorised NC members to the meeting and “no one else has been invited”. “So (we) request you to not come to the meeting to avoid any confrontation,” he wrote.

This came days after a section of AAP leaders expressed their displeasure over his continuance as the party ombudsman for his letter last month criticising the leadership.

In a letter to PAC, AAP’s highest decision making body, ahead of the National Executive meeting on February 26, Ramdas noted that there were two camps emerging within the top leadership and had asked the party to consider ‘one man, one post’ arrangement.

Miffed over the snub, Ramdas said he had visited from his village in Maharashtra to attend the meet, however, he would not attend the meet to “honour” the party’s request. “I am quite aware that the NC is a party internal affair. I am also aware that special invitees/observers have been invited to all bodies from PAC, to NEC to NC in the past,” he said.

Taking umbrage to the reference to the need for term of Lokpal to be renewed, Ramdas said that the party had “in effect” already extended his initial term as Lokpal when it had asked to investigate the credentials of candidates from Uttar Pradesh and Haryana prior to the filing of nominations for the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.