The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) stepped up its attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi by expanding its “Modi Hatao, Desh Bachao” poster campaign to 22 States in 11 different languages on Thursday.
Making the announcement at the party headquarters, AAP Delhi convener and Minister Gopal Rai said, “The Modi government wants to control the nation by suppressing the entire Opposition. Mr. Modi is stubbornly dismantling the democratic structure of the nation. This is a direct assault on India’s democratic structure and the Constitution.”
He also took a swipe at the BJP government, saying it was controlling the investigating agencies and trying to suppress the judiciary.
Late in the evening, the party said that several of its workers were detained by the police in different States over the posters.
Hitting back, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his party were surrounded by allegations of corruption and were facing a credibility crisis.
“Leave other parts of the country, they are not getting any support even from the people of Delhi. Now, a desperate Gopal Rai is trying to mislead the people by making statements against the Prime Minister, but he will not succeed,” he said.
The “Modi Hatao, Desh Bachao” campaign was launched from Jantar Mantar on Shaheed Diwas (March 23) by party chief Arvind Kejriwal, who asked whether an “uneducated” leader could steer the country towards development.
“At many places, the police seized the posters and even detained party workers. The Haryana police detained AAP Rajya Sabha member Sushil Gupta and senior leader Anurag Dhanda for some time. Similarly, in Ahmedabad, Pune and other places in Maharashtra, the police detained several AAP workers and seized their posters,” the party said in a statement on Thursday.
Earlier this month, Delhi Police filed 49 FIRs and arrested six persons, including two printing press owners, between March 20-21 for similar posters not having the printer’s name and also for defacement of property. The FIRs and arrests were not over the contents of the posters, a police officer said.
Meanwhile, the party on Thursday did not put up any posters in Delhi.
The posters have been printed in Hindi, English, Marathi, Punjabi, Malayalam, Odia, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Urdu and Telugu, according to the party.
As part of the second phase of the campaign from April 10, the posters will be promoted by students in universities across the country, Mr. Rai added.
