Even as sparks flew inside the venue where the Aam Aadmi Party’s National Executive went into a nearly six-hour long huddle, outside young men and women held on to the hope that a party that had clocked a massive victory in the Delhi polls just a month earlier would somehow stick together.
Party supporters gathered with signs like “United we stand, divided we fall”, appealing for a united AAP with pictures of its founding members, Arvind Kejriwal, Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, comfortably sharing space on A-4 sheets. Yet, by day’s end, the rift that became apparent since the national executive met on February 26 finally came out in the open.
Ignoring the appeals of a #UnitedAAP, a campaign that also took flight on social networking sites, it became evident that Mr. Kejriwal who skipped Wednesday’s meeting will continue to steer the party forward as national convener, while his colleagues Mr. Yadav and Mr. Bhushan would both forfeit their positions in the Political Affairs Committee.
Unlike the previous meeting, when only a few people had turned up, curious onlookers gathered in large numbers outside the venue in Kapashera hoping to catch a glimpse of the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. A day earlier, he had said he was “hurt and pained” by what was going on within the outfit terming it as an “ugly battle”, which has “betrayed” the trust imposed by the people.
Mr. Kejriwal, who chose not to attend the meeting despite being in Delhi, had said he refused to be drawn into the “ugly battle”, saying he will concentrate on Delhi’s governance. “Will not let people’s trust break under any circumstances,” he tweeted on Tuesday.
Sharp differences had come to the fore within the AAP with allegations that senior AAP leaders Mr. Bhushan and Mr. Yadav were trying to “remove” Mr. Kejriwal from the post of party convener.
The rift within the AAP caught the Opposition’s attention with the BJP’s senior leader Vijay Goel stating that there is “no internal democracy within the AAP and they are using the ‘democracy’ to sack founder members”.
Delhi Congress President Ajay Maken said that it was “disturbing… that divisions seem to have erupted” within the AAP.
