AAP National Council meet: Team Kejriwal asks MLAs to arrive with supporters

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party ’s National Council meet today is likely to turn acrimonious. Team Arvind Kejriwal is learnt to have asked all 67 MLAs of the party to reach the venue in North West Delhi with their supporters. Their task is simple: to stage a vociferous protest against the Prashant Bhushan-Yogendra Yadav faction. Each legislator, sources say, have been asked to bring at least five bus loads of people. “Each MLA has been asked to reach the venue with 150-200 supporters. Given the differences and level of anger in the two warring camps, the meet will be crucial. By calling MLAs and their volunteers, the Kejriwal faction will display its strength and try to press NC members to vote in its favour. The situation may turn ugly if a majority of the 350-member NC goes in favour of Bhushan-Yadav duo,” a party insider told Firstpost. [caption id=“attachment_2177703” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Prashan Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav. PTI[/caption] A message is also being circulated on WhatsApp that senior AAP leaders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan want to remove Kejriwal from AAP and therefore, his resignation from the post of the party’s convener is being sought. The emotional message reads in Hindi, “Yogendra Yadav wa Prashant Bhushan ki maang hai ki Arvind ko sanyojak pad se hata kar party se nikala jaye, jise aswikaar kar diya gaya hai. Is par unhone ab 28 March ko hone wali NC ki baithak men nirnay hoga kah kar baat cheet smapt kar di. Ab nirnay aap len…saathiyon main Arvind Kejriwal ko sanyojak pad se hataye jane aur party se nikale jane ka virodh karne 28 March subah 8 baje Calista Resort nikat Fun & Food Village, Kapashera ja raha hun. Kya aap aayenge Arvind ka samarthan karne? (Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan are demanding that Arvind must step down as convener and be removed from the party. But the demand was not accepted. They said a decision in this regard will be taken in the March 28 NC meet and called off the negotiations. Now, you decide…. Friends, I am going to Calista Resort near Fun & Food Village at Kapashera at 8 am to protest against the planned sacking and ouster of Arvind. Will you come to support Arvind?)” According to another source, (AAP national secretary) Pankaj Gupta has written to (AAP Lokpal) Admiral (retired) Laxminarayan Ramdas, asking him not to attend the meeting to avoid confrontation. He said the meeting is the party’s “internal affair” and only authorized NC members, MLAs and MPs had been invited to attend the meet. But the dissenting leaders have asked the party to urge Ramdas to help conduct the meeting. Some other NC members also want the party to ask the Admiral to preside over the meeting. They held a meeting in Delhi on Friday and decided to move seven resolutions, including the issues raised by the Bhushan-Yadav duo. Among them that AAP should constitute a committee to work on the lines of the Election Commission; that Lokpal Ramdas should chair the NC meeting; that AAP be brought in the ambit of RTI and an independent chief information commissioner be appointed. Party convener Arvind Kejriwal is expected to chair the NC meet. Less than two months after the AAP was swept to power in Delhi, prospects of its split loom large. The two groups of the party are indulged in allegations and counter allegations and refused to back down from their positions. Hours after Yadav, Bhushan and Professor Anand Kumar held a press conference on Friday and accused Kejriwal’s supporters of “telling lies” to isolate them, an audio recording of a conversation between Kejriwal and Umesh Singh, party volunteer from Varanasi, was released on Friday in which the former is heard abusing his senior party colleagues Professor Ajit Jha, Professor Kumar, Yadav and Bhushan. He even threatened to form a new party with 67 MLAs. However, the Kejriwal camp hit back claiming that “private” conversations of leaders were being “recorded” for the past nine months to “blackmail” the leadership. “They (the rival camp of Bhushan-Yadav) had been hatching a conspiracy against the party leadership for quite some time now. Our conversations were being recorded for the past nine months to blackmail the party leadership,” said AAP spokesperson Deepak Bajpayee. While Yadav, in his response, said he has no complaints as Kejriwal is like his younger brother and has all the rights to say that, Bhushan, Kumar and Jha said they are “disappointed” with the language he used.