A man hurled a shoe at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal here on Saturday trigerring a war of words between the Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Chief Minister, flanked by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Transport Minister Gopal Rai, was addressing a press conference on the modalities of the odd-even vehicle rationing scheme when the incident occurred.
The shoe missed the Chief Minister.
The accused, later identified as Ved Prakash, was overpowered and whisked off by security personnel.
Ved Prakash was arrested late in the evening by the Delhi police on charges of obstructing a public servant and assaulting and using criminal force to deter him while discharging duty.
AAP slams BJP
The AAP accused Prakash of being in cahoots with the local BJP leadership.
A senior Delhi government official told The Hindu that Prakash “had received a call on his mobile phone from a Delhi BJP leader 10 minutes before the incident”.
The BJP condemned the incident saying it exhibited that people “are disappointed with the party which came to power by showing golden dreams”.
BJP Delhi president Satish Upadhyay said there was a possibility that Mr. Kejriwal’s “old political colleagues may be behind the incident”, which may “be the result of the disappointment due to the betrayal with those colleagues”, The Delhi government filed a police complaint.
“We have received a complaint and are in the process of registering a case,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Paramaditya told The Hindu .
Prakash abruptly stood up claiming that he belonged to the Aam Aadmi Party Sena — a splinter group which claims to be a breakaway faction of the AAP headquartered in Punjab — demanding to know what the government was doing to curb the “sale of fake CNG stickers” before hurling one of his black trainers at Mr. Kejriwal seconds after the Chief Minister began speaking. Prakash also threw a CD which he claimed contained a sting operation he had conducted on the illegal sale of CNG stickers last year.
During his campaign for the Delhi Assembly elections in 2014, >Mr. Kejriwal was attacked with stone while he was addressing a public meeting in South Delhi.
In January this year, >a woman belonging to Aam Aadmi Sena threw ink at him as he was addressing a ‘thanksgiving’ session to celebrate the success of the Delhi government’s odd-even scheme.
