Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson and Aam Aadmi Party candidate from the East Delhi Lok Sabha seat Rajmohan Gandhi on Sunday compared AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal with the Father of the Nation in terms of the “energy” and “hope” they created during the movements led by them in two different time periods.
Addressing a public meeting in his Lok Sabha constituency, Mr. Gandhi said the energy and hope created by the advent of the AAP under the leadership of Mr. Kejriwal was “akin” to and “reminds” one of Gandhiji and the manner in which he led movements such as Salt Satyagraha during struggle for Independence.
“I have told this several times that the energy and enthusiasm during Independence movements which I have studied and written about are seen in the advent of the AAP under the leadership of Mr. Kejriwal. I am not saying Gandhiji and Kejriwal are identical but there are some shades which are common between them,” added Mr. Gandhi, who divides his time between India and the United States where he is a research professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
“When Mr. Kejriwal went to Gujarat to examine the ‘development’ and wrote to Chief Minister Narendra Modi posing 16 questions, some thing happened across the world,” pointed out Mr. Gandhi, while comparing this to the times when people initially underestimated Gandhiji’s proposal of Salt Satyagraha but later realised that it had managed to catch the imagination of the freedom-seeking masses.