AAP-BJP battle reaches Rajghat: Kejriwal shows strength at Gandhi memorial, BJP pours Gangajal

Hours before the Thursday meeting was to start though, some AAP leaders claimed that 6-7 party MLAs were not reachable by phone. As 11 am drew closer, anxiety started to spread, with over a third of the MLAs not reaching the CM’s bungalow at Civil Lines on time.

Finally at noon, the AAP said that all its MLAs who were supposed to make it to the meeting had reached Kejriwal’s house and that the AAP government was stable. Some of them were unable to reach as they were not in the city, but they were contacted over the phone.

The party MLA from Okhla, Amanatullah Khan, could not make it the meet as he was “stuck in a traffic jam” but he spoke to Kejriwal on a video call, said AAP national spokesperson and Greater Kailash MLA, Saurabh Bhardwaj.

Terming it as a “flop show”, the BJP said it will not respond to the AAP’s “operation lotus” charges pertaining to horsetrading against it as this was just a move by the ruling party to divert attention from the corruption allegations in the multi-crore Delhi liquor policy scam against the Kejriwal government and Deputy CM Manish Sisodia.

Following the meeting at his house, Kejriwal, accompanied by over 50 AAP MLAs, headed to Rajghat, where they prayed at the Mahatma Gandhi memorial.

Hours later, the BJP’s Yuva Morcha activists went to Rajghat and poured Gangajal to “purify” the Gandhi Samadhi. The BJP youth wing’s leader Abhimanyu Tyagi said, “The reason behind our pouring Ganga Jal is that AAP is earning money by perpetrating a scam in selling liquor and trying to save themselves by using Bapu’s name. They should have realised that Bapu was against alcohol.”

The AAP has swept the Delhi Assembly elections for two consecutive times since 2015. The party won 67 out of the total 70 seats in the 2015 polls and 62 seats in 2020.

Making its debut in the 2013 polls, the AAP had won 28 seats as compared to the BJP’s

31 and the Congress’s 8. The AAP had then formed the government with outside support from the Congress. The government however collapsed after 49 days as Kejriwal chose to resign citing differences with the Congress over the passage of the Lokpal Bill.

For over a year afterwards, Delhi was under President’s rule, with the Assembly being kept under suspended animation.

At the time the BJP needed only four MLAs to form its government in Delhi, even as the Congress-led UPA was then ruling the Centre. In September 2014, panic had run through the AAP leadership after it found that three of its MLAs – Ashok Kumar Chauhan, Dharmender Singh Koli and Prakash Jarwal – had left Delhi for Goa, allegedly because they had been offered money to join the BJP so that the saffron party could form its government. They were, however, contacted by the party upon their landing in Goa and were asked to return immediately.

Referring to this episode, a senior AAP leader, who did not want to be named, said, “So far, this has been the single biggest situation when AAP was not aware of any backroom dealings (involving its MLAs). After that Kapil Mishra and Anil Bajpayee also left AAP, but this did not come to the party as a surprise as they had already made their intentions clear before quitting.”

The leader also said, “In 2014, AAP was in a vulnerable position as it was not in a majority. BJP needed only a few MLAs but with Harsh Vardhan and Ramesh Bidhuri being elected to the Lok Sabha, they lost out on a few more MLAs. We had heard that they were in touch with several Congress MLAs at the time and needed only 2-3 more to form the government and that’s why our MLAs were contacted.”

Since then, the AAP’s political and electoral situation in Delhi has been remarkably different, with the party having been in a virtually unassailable position where a few MLAs’ bid to switch loyalties would not have any impact on the survival and stability of the Kejriwal government.