The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) plans to file a complaint with the Election Commission against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) alleged character assassination of party chief Arvind Kejriwal, it said on Wednesday, seeking strict action against the saffron party.
This comes a day after the EC issued a show cause notice to the AAP for making “disparaging” remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi on its social media handle.
“The BJP for the past many days has been doing character assassination of AAP’s chief and star campaigner Arvind Kejriwal mainly through their social media handles. A derogatory and defamatory vilification campaign is being run against him. The AAP is going to file a complaint with the Election Commission against this conspiracy of the BJP and the character assassination of Arvind Kejriwal,” AAP MP Raghav Chadha told journalists. He added that the party is hopeful that the EC will take note of the complaint soon and take action against the BJP.
Losing anti-corruption image
Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor, however, claimed that the AAP government had dug its own grave, saying that it was wrong to hold the BJP responsible for Mr. Kejriwal’s loss of image as the AAP chief was responsible for it himself.
“Kejriwal raised an anti-corruption campaign and spoke against nepotism in political parties but today his government is known for scams, from auto permit scam of 2015 to liquor scam of 2023,” he said.
On the EC notice to the AAP, Mr. Chadha said that the legal cell of the party was working on a reply. “The post for which the AAP got the notice, that content the AAP posted on its social media handles on November 8, was a reply to the BJP’s November 5 social media post. Sadly, AAP got a notice, but BJP did not. We hope that notice will be sent to BJP also for the post on November 5 on its social media platforms,” Mr. Chadha said.
The MP alleged that this was not the first time that the BJP was stooping to low politics to damage the image of AAP leaders, claiming that the BJP thrives on character assassinations.
Attack videos
On November 5, the Delhi BJP had posted a video on social media platform X, collating different videos and photos of Mr. Kejriwal into a supposed day in the CM’s life, with a narrator’s voice saying: “I abused Modiji”; “I gave fake promises”; “I went to my ‘sheesh mahal’ [a reference used by the BJP for the Delhi CM’s official residence]“; “I drank one plus one free quarter [of alcohol]“; and “I then ate samosa for ₹4 crore”.
On November 8, the AAP posted a video from its own X account, with the caption: “Modi’s interesting routine. Watch the full video to know.” Over videos and photos of Mr. Modi, a narrator is heard saying: “This is a day of my life. I went to my boss Adani ji and took today’s orders and went to give Mann ki Baat and confused everyone... Then I sat in my ₹4,500 crore aeroplane to give new fake promises in Madhya Pradesh... Then I sold four more government companies to the boss. Then I read Hitler’s Mein Kampf and learnt how to stay in power without winning elections.”
