While many leaders have directly charged Arvind Kejriwal of failing leadership, this latest comment by Shanti Bhushan could be hazardous.
Senior leader and AAP founder member, Shanti Bhushan has done it again. Taking a pot shot at Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal, Bhushan has said that Kejriwal has failed AAP and he should be removed from the post of party chief. The octogenarian called for a 'reorganisation' of AAP, expressing dismay that the 'party is not being run on lines it was expected to and what it was established for'.
Bhushan even went ahead to hail BJP's Delhi CM nominee, Kiran Bedi as a good candidate for the chief minister post. This has not gone down well with the party members, but they managed to come up with a commendable disaster management. Kejriwal said, "This shows our party provides Freedom of Speech to one and all."
This is a second strike from the party's own senior leader Shanti Bhushan. In August last year, it can be recalled that Bhushan had made comments along the same lines. "He (Kejriwal) does not have that kind of competence which can spread the message of the party all over India." Prashnat Bhushan, Shanti Bhushan's lawyer son, also found it wise to distance himself from his father's comments then.
These comments from the party's mentor could prove to be disastrous for AAP when the elections are just about 15 days away. The party has anyway lost much credibility when it gave up the government within 49 days of coming into power in December 2013 Assembly elections. It is huge when a party's senior most leader wants the party chief replaced.
This is not the first time that the party has seen infighting.
In June 2014, one of the party's important leaders, Yogendra Yadav resigned from Political Affairs Committee. He charged the party of 'falling prey to personality cult' as the reason to his resignation. This created a stir, but Kejriwal controlled the situation and was back on good terms with Yadav soon.
There were 5 major exits in AAP in 2014, all of them citing different reasons for their resignation.
First major blow was when journalist Shazia Ilmi quit AAP citing lack of democracy in the party. But just when AAP was waking up from the trauma of Ilmi's resignation, they were faced with another blow. Shazia Ilmi joined rival party BJP in January 2015, the same party about whom she had said a few nasty things in the media during her stint with AAP.
Vinod Kumar Binny was expelled from the party only because he raised his voice against the party's top leadership. When he was very much a party member, Binny had accused AAP of betraying people and making false promises.
Anti-nuclear movement activist SP Udaykumar left the party saying that the party did not pay sufficient attention to the South of India and its problems.
MS Dhir, the speaker of Delhi Assembly, said that the former Delhi CM who ruled the state for 49 days, doesn't deserve a second chance and may run away in 29 days.
Several other leaders have expressed their displeasure and left AAP making it difficult for the party to win the voters' trust. But for a leader who calls himself an anarchist, this does not seem to bother even a bit.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has truly gone through a rollercoaster ride since its birth in 2012. From being a party with little mass base banking on the nostalgia of the India Against Corruption movement, to gaining power in Delhi, and subsequently falling out of favour with the common people, the Arvind Kejriwal-led party has come full circle.
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