AAP slugfest continues, Mayank Gandhi says he may be compelled to quit party

READ: Anjali Damania seeks action against Mayank Gandhi

In another blog post on Saturday morning, Gandhi said, “A small group of party decision makers in Delhi have already removed me from the informal BBM group. Attacks have begun against me from Ashish Khetan and others. Some dissatisfied members from Maharashtra have started giving interviews against me, some old cases are being re-opened.”

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Gandhi’s comments come two days after his earlier blog entry, where he claimed to be defying AAP’s National Executive directions by speaking about the proceedings of the meeting held on March 4. The earlier blog post had drawn sharp criticism from a section of AAP leaders and supporters. Khetan and AAP leader from Maharashtra Anjali Damania, for instance, had taken to Twitter to criticise Gandhi.

Responding to such attacks, Gandhi said in his blog post, “A concerted attempt is being made on social media to call me anti-party and anti-AK. The party may decide not to fight BMC elections or delay the decision for the same, leadership of Maharashtra will be challenged and discredited by some individuals, media leaks will be made.”

“More will come and I will be finally humiliated so much that I will quit. That was what was planned for YY and PB, but they overturned that plan by staying inside the party. Let me see if I can withstand the muck that will be thrown,” he said.

Stating that AAP volunteers were the “real owners of the party”, Gandhi urged them to “bring back the founding principles in the party”. “Volunteers must propose that all NE meetings be video-recorded and volunteers allowed to view the same,” Gandhi said. He also added that the volunteers were feeling alienated due to “wall built between them, the committees and their non-transparent decisions”.

Damania slammed Gandhi for coming out with “half-truth” on the proceedings of the NE meeting. “I request him (Gandhi) to either come out with the full truth of the National Executive meeting. If not, he should not talk about it at all. What is being presented is a half-truth,” Damania told Newsline.

Damania said, “If a volunteer had done this, he would have been removed. The same rules should be applicable to leaders.”

The AAP leader also called for a probe into the leak of the AAP Lokpal’s letter to the NE members where he raised concerns about the party’s functioning, even calling for the reconstitution of the NE and the PAC.

Another letter from an AAP member from Rajasthan, Rajesh Parikh, who was a part of Rajasthan’s state executive team, came to the fore on Saturday. While Parikh could not be reached for comments, the e-mail which was purportedly sent to senior AAP leaders by him, expressed solidarity with Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan. In a statement issued by the AAP’s Rajasthan unit, however, the party unit maintained that the views expressed by Parikh were personal remarks. The AAP’s Rajasthan unit further backed the party’s decision to remove the two leaders from the PAC.