Those hopeful of a respite from the Aam Aadmi Party's internal wars will be disappointed, as the biggest showdown is yet to happen. The party's National Council meets on March 28-29, where, sources say, national convenor Arvind Kejriwal's coterie of loyalists is campaigning to get Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav out of the National Executive.
Those hopeful of a respite from the Aam Aadmi Party's internal wars will be disappointed, as the biggest showdown is yet to happen. The party's National Council meets on March 28-29, where, sources say, national convenor Arvind Kejriwal's coterie of loyalists is campaigning to get Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav out of the National Executive.
At the National Executive meeting in Delhi on March 4, Bhushan and Yadav were voted out of the Parliamentary Affairs Committee, the party's highest decision making body. Kejriwal had threatened to resign unless Bhushan and Yadav were out of the PAC, making it a non-negotiable situation. The fact that the vote was closer than anticipated, 11 against them, 8 in their favour, shows that the two have more influence in the party than Kejriwal's camp probably expected.
However, getting voted out of the National Executive means being completely redundant in the party, almost as good as being kicked out altogether.
March 4 also saw the resignation of Prashant Bhushan's sister Shalini Gupta from the post of coordinator AAP Global Supporters. Reports in the media say that Gupta had written to AAP's NRI supporters to abstain from donations, as the party had taken on board corrupt candidates; the same candidates that Bhushan had raised questions over. Gupta's letter had come before the party's Lokpal decided to remove two candidates.
The National Council of the AAP is a body of some 500 members, which include convenors of different cities in different states, founder members such as Shanti Bhushan, Bandana Kumari, currently deputy speaker in the Delhi Assembly, Naveen Jaihind from Haryana, to name a few.
The list that the party submitted to the Election Commission has 564 members, with maximum representation from Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. However, some names have been struck off as having been removed or expelled. Some names, sources say, are kept under a strict watch by the party as trouble makers, one of them being Iliyas Azmi, member of the National Executive, even though he had voted in favour of removing Bhushan and Yadav out of the PAC.
Azmi says that though the National Council has powers to reconstitute the National Executive, he sees no danger for Bhushan and Yadav. According to him there are very few people, such as Naveen Jaihind, who have steadily been turning Kejriwal against Yogendra Yadav. These few people will not be able to turn over 500 people against Bhushan and Yadav.
The morning of the National Executive meet on March 4, Jaihind told the media that he wanted Bhushan and Yadav out of the party entirely for supposedly conspiring against Kejriwal.
Other "trouble makers" on this list are said to be Prafull Vora, founder member from Mumbai, Omkar Shukla from Delhi, Ratnesh Kumar Choudhary from Patna.
Suspicions are that Kejriwal's camp will try to skew the membership of the NC in their favour, to vote Bhushan and Yadav, by perhaps removing those more sympathetic to the ousted two. Founder member from Mumbai Mayank Gandhi has gone public with his fears that he is next in the line of fire. For now, plenty in the party still support the two founder members of the party, and have spoken out in their favour.
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