Alka Lamba says not resigning; Aam Aadmi Party denies asking for it

A day after its legislators ruffled feathers in Delhi Assembly for reportedly demanding to strip off Bharat Ratna given to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the Aam Aadmi Party on Saturday denied having passed any such resolution. The party leadership also dismissed reports of seeking resignation from its MLA Alka Lamba after she refused to support the resolution.

Lamba had earlier claimed that chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had asked her to resign because she did not agree with the consensus. The resolution called for the speedy trial of cases and termed anti-Sikh riots as genocide.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and former BJP Delhi chief Vijay Goel said, "Vote bank politics of AAP have fallen to a new level. AAP MLA Jarnail Singh yesterday moved a resolution on 1984 anti-Sikh riots including the demand to withdraw Bharat Ratna from former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as he has justified the 1984 riots in one of his statements."

Clarifying his stance on Saturday, AAP MLA Jarnail Singh said though he had "expressed his feelings" that Gandhi's Bharat Ratna be revoked for justifying the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the demand was not included in the resolution passed in the Assembly. Speaker Ram Niwas Goel also insisted that the House passed the original resolution which did not contain the former Prime Minister's name. The Tilak Nagar MLA had added it to the resolution but the House did not adopt it, Goel said.

Later in the day, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia held a press conference, apparently to clear the party's stance on the controversy. Kejriwal's second-in-command maintained that the party never tabled a resolution that figured Gandhi's name. "It was just a proposal by a member. Members are free to express their feelings in the Assembly. There is a proper procedure that is followed to get an amendment passed. A member approaches the Speaker who then accepts it and asks for a vote," he said.

Sisodia also downplayed Lamba's incident, dismissing it as "rumours". "No one has been asked to resign. These are all baseless rumours," he said. "I am not resigning," Lamba said soon after.

How It Started 

• AAP MLA Jarnail Singh, while moving the resolution in the assembly, had mentioned Gandhi’s name while reading the text and demanded that the Congress leader’s Bharat Ratna be withdrawn for “justifying the anti-Sikh riots”
• Lamba had earlier claimed that Arvind Kejriwal had asked her to resign because she did not agree with the consensus
• Sisodia said that it was an individual handwritten proposal by MLA Somnath Bharti