Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from Dwarka Adarsh Shastri joined the Congress on Saturday following which he accused AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal of “flouting all democratic norms to sell tickets for the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections for ₹10 crore to ₹20 crore”.
Welcoming Mr. Shastri into the party fold, Delhi Congress chief Subhash Chopra termed it a “ghar wapsi”. He also attacked the Delhi government for “failing on all fronts, throwing its idealism to the winds, indulging in corruption, and exhibiting total indifference towards the the people of Delhi”.
“The Kejriwal-led government came to power with the specific agenda of ending corruption and implementing Swaraj and Lokpal... though it has passed the Lokpal Bill in the Assembly, the AAP government has not taken any step to enforce it... the irony is that after being in power for five years, Kejriwal himself has become a symbol of corruption,” Mr. Chopra said.
Mr. Shastri attacked the CM for “belittling the self-respect” of his party’s legislators. He said he had left his job with a multinational company to join AAP as he had thought that an “honest man would herald clean politics”. “I changed my opinion of AAP after it sold tickets through two MPs, instead of giving them to committed AAP volunteers... there was huge corruption in AAP’s ticket distribution for the municipal polls,” Mr. Shastri alleged.
“Mr. Kejriwal will be best remembered for spreading corruption in politics... I had requested him to give tickets to devoted AAP workers, but he instead sold them for ₹10 crore to ₹20 crore... Kejriwal treats MLAs like bonded labour,” he said.
‘Yoganand resigns’
Meanwhile, senior Congress leader and former Delhi Assembly Speaker Yoganand Shastri resigned from the party over alleged differences with Mr. Chopra. Both Mr. Chopra and AICC Delhi in-charge P.C. Chacko, however, denied having any information about the move.
