Internal Feud in the Aam Aadmi Party
March 28, 2015
Reasons may be entirely different, but happenings on 27 March, just a day ahead of the turbulent Aam Aadmi Party’s national council meet, showed marked similarity between the sanitation staff of the BJP-ruled Delhi Municipal Corporation and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. While the sanitation staff littered the roads of Delhi with garbage in protest of delayed salary, Kejriwal’s gutter talks against his perceived detractors within the party – the triumvirate of Yogendra Yadav, Professor Anand Kumar and Prashant Bhushan – matched the irate of MCD protestors in no lesser terms as revealed in a sting operation carried out by one of his own party men.
Kejriwal was caught hurling abuses against the three leaders in a secretly recorded telephonic conversation between him and Umesh Singh – a rival camp volunteer who claimed that he recorded the conversation only when he was provoked by the CM, the veracity of which is not denied by the party.
The party, thereafter, apologised for Kejriwal’s conduct but at what cost? He might not like the comparison but his loose tongue not only sparked a heated debate over the conduct of public figures, but also reflected poorly on his abilities to retain his composure in strenuous situations.
‘Sala’ and ‘Kamina’ – the invectives that he used are common derogatory terms in Hindi used by the Aam Aadmi (Common Man) on the street. By using them for his rivals, he did bring the internal conflict in his party to the streets of Delhi.
For once, it was Kejriwal himself who not only forewarned of a vertical split in his party, but even threatened to float a new outfit with his flock of 67 AAP legislators, while the rival camp continued swearing by the party cadres and their loyalty to them. Yet, Yadav missed no opportunity to hit the nail on the head as he claimed at a press conference: “He (Kejriwal) cannot work with people who have differing voices and stand up to him.”
Therefore, it was predictable that the rival camp termed the proceedings of the national council meeting on 28 March, which voted to oust the trio (along with Ajit Jha) from the AAP’s national executive, as farce and “death of democracy”. According to the trio, bouncers were deployed who even manhandled them – a claim that the AAP spokesman Ashutosh said was a “cooked up story to gain sympathy”. Kumar, however, asserted that they still remained in the party and would work to “cleanse” it. But the disintegration of the party does seem imminent as of now.
Sting Operations Against Kejriwal
Consider how Kejriwal had been targeted with a series of sting operations of late. First, it was a sting by a former AAP MLA Rajesh Garg who released an audio tape on 11 March, supposedly recorded sometime in July-August of 2014, just before the Assembly had been dissolved and the party was demanding fresh polls. Kejriwal was heard discussing the possibility of forming the government in Delhi by engineering a defection in the Congress Legislative Party.
The second sting was purportedly done by former Congress MLA Asif Khan, who, despite claiming that Kejriwal’s close confidante Sanjay Singh had approached him for the support, refused to make the recorded meeting public. Yet another sting operation was carried by former AAP leader Shahid Azad, who released a tape earlier this month. The tape claimed that Kejriwal refused tickets to Muslim hopefuls on the premise that the minority community’s votes were already in his party’s kitty.
The stings and the timing of making them public in quick succession suggested a definite design to malign Kejriwal. The Asif Khan episode, too, gave a certain twist as some would like to believe – certain “outside forces” were trying to destabilise the AAP.
Fair enough. But didn’t Kejriwal’s outbursts suggest that he rather preferred playing into the hands of such forces than dousing the fire within? Consider how in recent times his camp built up pressure on Yadav and his ilk to quit the party as it accused the triumvirate of working to get the AAP defeated in the Delhi elections – a charge vehemently denied by the rival camp. Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were even unceremoniously ousted from the party’s political affairs committee on 4 March for alleged anti-party activities. To add insult to the injury, a no-confidence resolution was moved against them at the national council meeting!
Kejriwal’s Differences With the Rival Camp
It is true that the Yadav camp did have sharp differences with Kejriwal, particularly over the issue of the expansion of AAP beyond Delhi. They had even put up five conditions before the party that an AAP spokesperson claimed were accepted. These conditions were:
- 1) Autonomy of state units
- 2) Probe on unethical practices and stings
- 3) Greater participation of volunteers in the decision-making process
- 4) Assurance that the party comes under Right to Information
- 5) Vacancies in the national executive should be filled up through secret ballot
However, the way things turned out during the party’s national council meeting when the Yadav camp members were disallowed entry, it proved a couple of points:
- 1) The disintegration of the AAP was complete
- 2) Kejriwal had reasserted his supremacy
Kejriwal’s Clout Remains Unaffected
Kejriwal is confident that he would retain the support of 67 AAP MLAs. It also reflects his firm conviction that he would be able to tide over the crisis. The fact that he managed to expel the rebels amidst high drama testifies his abilities.
What comes to Kejriwal’s advantage is his own track record at hustings. It makes him stand taller than his rivals. There is no dnying that he successfully catapulted his party of political greenhorns to the seat of power twice in succession in Delhi. It was solely because of him that the electorates voted for the AAP in Delhi. At the Lok Sabha elections, too, when the AAP could win only four seats from Punjab, Kejriwal was a creditable second in his contest against the eventual Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Varanasi.
In sharp contrast, the only time when Yogendra Yadav entered the fray – in 2014 Lok Sabha elections – he lost his deposit and came a distant fourth. Professor Anand Kumar, too, lost the last general elections while the last member of the triumvirate, Prashant Bhushan, never had a tryst with electoral politics.
Ostensibly, Kejriwal well recognised that he was the face of the party and that did make him more ambitious and intolerant towards criticism. Yet, could he underestimate the clout of Yadav, Bhushan and Kumar within the party? After all, they too are known faces and co-founders of the party.
Reports suggested that the trio still had the tacit support of 248 national council members of the AAP, who are from outside Delhi.
Indeed Kejriwal will have to tackle this factor in pursuance of his ambition to have a firm grip on the AAP and the Delhi government. But will his gutter talks help? He has already seen many desertions from his party. What does the future for the triumvirate look like? One thing is for sure – they need to win elections. As for now, the AAP needs to reconcile to the indisputable split in its fold!
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