Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had launched “operation jhadu [broom]“ to eliminate the AAP as it saw the party’s “meteoric rise” as a threat. Mr. Kejriwal said the BJP’s plan was to “arrest big leaders of the AAP, freeze the bank accounts and evict the AAP from its office in an attempt to destroy the party.”
He was speaking at the party office ahead of a march to the BJP headquarters along with senior leaders and MLAs that he had called for on Saturday after the arrest of his personal assistant Bibhav Kumar for “assaulting” the party’s Rajya Sabha member Swati Maliwal. The AAP has claimed that the entire incident was orchestrated by the BJP to defame the party and that Ms. Maliwal was a pawn in this conspiracy.
Mr. Kejriwal had dared Prime Minster Narendra Modi to arrest AAP leaders en masse during the march instead of doing it one by one. The police had barricaded the stretch of road from the AAP’s office to the BJP office on DDU Marg in the heart of the city to prevent the march from taking place. The AAP national convener instructed his workers to walk peacefully to the BJP office to the point where police stop them and wait to get arrested. “We will sit there for an hour and wait for them to arrest us. If they do not come and arrest us, it will be their defeat. We will come back after waiting for half an hour,” Mr. Kejriwal said. The AAP leaders dispersed after sitting on a dharna for half an hour.
‘Bigger challenges’
In his address, Mr. Kejriwal told party workers that they should be ready to face bigger challenges ahead. “Three days ahead of the Punjab Assembly elections, at a rally in Abohar, the Prime Minister called me a Khalistani terrorist. The Delhi elections are on May 25 and Punjab elections are on June 1. In the next few days they are going to hurl abuses at us as they can stoop down to any level. The public needs to be careful,” he said.
Speaking about his 50 days spent in jail before being granted interim bail to campaign in the ongoing election, Mr. Kejriwal said that he utilised his time effectively and read the Bhagavad Gita twice and the Ramayana once. “The AAP is an idea. It is written in the Bhagavad Gita also that an idea cannot be imprisoned, it cannot be burnt, it cannot be cut. The idea of the AAP that is spreading across the country cannot be destroyed,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
