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AAP rift: Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav await party's next move

The days of intellectuals in Aam Aadmi Party seem to be numbered as supporters, volunteers and the general public wait with bated breath for an imminent split. The camp of leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, ousted from AAP's national executive, has categorically stated that they will not leave the party of their own accord. "We will neither be quitters nor splitters," said Anand Kumar, who along with Ajit Jha was also removed from the NE.

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The days of intellectuals in Aam Aadmi Party seem to be numbered as supporters, volunteers and the general public wait with bated breath for an imminent split. The camp of leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, ousted from AAP's national executive, has categorically stated that they will not leave the party of their own accord. "We will neither be quitters nor splitters," said Anand Kumar, who along with Ajit Jha was also removed from the NE.

The camp has decided to wait for the actions of the Delhi state unit of the party, headed by Ashutosh and the Delhi disciplinary committee. As they are no longer NE members, the four men come under the ambit of the Delhi unit. Sources say, the leaders feel sooner or later the state unit, led by the Kejriwal camp, will get someone to file a false complaint against them, to initiate disciplinary action. Such action will likely see them out of the party entirely.

Sources close to these leaders say that men in the Kejriwal camp had long expressed irritation to intellectuals and academics, such as Yadav, Kumar and Jha, in politics, and see their expulsion as fitting.

Meanwhile, the Bhushan camp sees this as yet another indication of the Kejriwal camp's arrogance. "They forget they are dwarves standing on the shoulders of modest giants," said one leader close to Bhushan.

For now, though, the ousted leaders are planning to hold a national conference in the second or third week of April, of around 2000-3000 people, National Council members, office bearers and volunteers of AAP from all over the country. They have reason to be confident of numbers. Sources say that in their meeting post the disastrous National Council meet on March 28, almost 500 people showed up and many party members from outside Delhi spoke.

Other courses of action are calling for another National Council meet and going to court. The camp is currently reaching out to as many NC members as possible to get proof of unconstitutional means of moving the resolution and taking the vote that got them kicked out of the NC.

It is obvious that certain party leaders are not at all happy with the way things are unfolding. News reports of Maharashtra leaders wanting to resign have already hit the media.

On Monday, NE leader from Varanasi Rakesh Kumar Sinha wrote a scathing letter to Pankaj Gupta, AAP national secretary, expressing doubts over the decisions taken by the emergency NE meeting after the National Council. He asks why, as a member of the NE, he wasn't called for the meeting and if the way Admiral Ramdas has been removed as the party's lokpal is justified. He brings up Sanjay Singh's position to look into state elections, asking if this spells the end of the much-hyped Mission Vistar (Expansion).

Another letter emerged from AAP MLa from Bijwasan, Colonel Devendra Sehrawat, addressed to Kejriwal. The letter says that AAP leader Durgesh Pathak organised meetings of volunteers who are against Sehrawat in his constituency. It brusquely tells Kejriwal to ask Pathak to be more "innovative" when acting against him. Sehrawat was one of the only two MLAs who did not sign a petition asking for disciplinary action against Bhushan and Yadav after the two were removed from the PAC.

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