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Bhushans running PIL industry, accuses AAP's Ashish Khetan

Gandhi had raised many hackles within the party, for speaking up in favour of Bhushan, Yadav, Kumar and Jha after the turbulent National Council meeting

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The spillover from the unceremonious expulsion of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) rebellious quartet of Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha turned uglier on Tuesday. 

A day after they were kicked out by the party’s National Disciplinary Committee, both camps took pains to publicly justify their actions and vilify the others. Accusations and counter-accusations went flying as both sides tried to rake up as much muck as possible.

AAP leader, Delhi Dialogue Commission vice chairperson and former journalist Ashish Khetan, who had, so far, kept quiet, lashed out against Bhushans’ accusations of him writing “paid news”. 

Casting doubt on the source of Bhushans' wealth, Khetan accused his former friend of making money through the “PIL industry”.

“The Bhushan family has property worth over Rs 500 crore. I want to know whether this has been earned through PILs. If this is the case, then filing PIL is a big industry,” Khetan said.

In his reply to the show-cause notice, Bhushan had accused Khetan of planting stories in favour of Essar during his time in Tehelka.

An angry Khetan threatened that he would not leave the Bhushans alone for having challenged him. He dared them to either prove the charges against him or quit public life. Using the line often used and abused by most political leaders defending themselves, Khetan said that he would quit politics if the charges were found true. 

In reply, Shanti Bhushan counter-dared Khetan to try and expose his family, which he called “the most honest family in the country”.

Though Bhushan made no new accusations today, he repeated many of his old ones, calling party leader and former comrade Arvind Kejriwal a dictator and AAP a khap panchayat. 

Yogendra Yadav spoke at length to the press, recounting how many times he and Bhushan had fought against “high command culture” and for party leadership to follow procedure when making decisions. 

Taking the moral high ground, he said they didn’t go public before as that’s not how things are done. Yadav added that though Bhushan thought that the negotiations that happened before the National Council meet were a whitewash, he had wanted to keep trying to talk to the Kejriwal camp.

Meanwhile, AAP leader Ashutosh wrote a lengthy blog explaining why the party had no choice but to remove the four men from its ranks. Countering their claims of fighting for swaraj, Ashutosh called their Samvad, the national dialogue Bhushan and Yadav held on April 14, a way of holding a referendum on whether to form a new party or not. 

He wrote that the two had been unmasked to the world, by showing no respect for any of the decision making bodies in the party. Meanwhile, AAP also removed its MP from Patiala, Punjab Dharamvir Gandhi, as its parliamentary party leader, replacing him with the far more loyal Bhagwant Mann. 

Gandhi had raised many hackles within the party, for speaking up in favour of Bhushan, Yadav, Kumar and Jha after the turbulent National Council meeting. However, Gandhi has so far avoided being associated with the Swaraj Abhiyan, the rebel’s new movement.

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