The government’s move to probe alleged foreign funding to the Aam Aadmi Party seems to have gone in favour of the party. By Tuesday, the daily donation to the AAP had increased six-fold, a development for which party leader Arvind Kejriwal thanked the BJP and the Congress.
“Complete transparency”
“We are grateful to the BJP and the Congress for raising questions on our funds. Donations have increased six times; 1,100 people have donated since morning,” tweeted Mr. Kejriwal who also insisted that the AAP maintains complete transparency on source of funds.
On a normal day, the AAP gets Rs. 5-6 lakh as donations, but on Tuesday, around 2,400 people came forward to donate a total of over Rs.30 lakh. The party had on Wednesday received donations of over Rs.19 lakh till 8 p.m., taking the party coffer to Rs.19.65 crore.
Several donors contributed more than once. “The donation page of the AAP website crashed on Monday because of the heavy traffic of online donors,” said a party representative.
A day after the Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said the government had ordered an inquiry against the AAP after receiving complaints about alleged foreign donations, on Tuesday, he asserted the probe was not a government initiative, but a direction from the Delhi High Court.
Dilip Pandey, an AAP member, who is part of the team which looks after donations, said the party accepts foreign donations only from Indian passport holders.
Backfired
He claimed the attempt by the BJP and the Congress to question the source of funding to the AAP had backfired. “People have reacted strongly to those who themselves hide everything about their sources of funding, but baselessly allege that the AAP is not transparent,” he said.
Jeevan Thomsan, an Indian staying at Doha, wrote on Kejriwal’s Facebook page: “I am also a humble donor, to show my anger against false accusations I donated for the third time. I am not able to see any donation list of any other parties except the AAP. Still the others question the AAP funding.”