Final move: Kejriwal to kick out Yadav, Bhushan and quit as AAP's convener

The Aam Aadmi Party is preparing to throw out dissenters Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav on 28 March, the day the 350-member National Council of the party meets. Arvind Kejriwal, who returned to New Delhi from Bangalore after undergoing treatment at Jindal Institute of Naturopathy, will resign as the party’s national convenor after eliminating all warring factions, sources in the party said.

The sources said Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh and Kumar Vishwas are strong contenders for the post but Singh is ahead in this race.

“Efforts are on to reach a consensus on the proposed ouster of the rebel leaders. A final decision in this regard will be taken in a meeting on Tuesday that has been called to finalise the agenda for the National Council. The Kejriwal camp wants to throw them out of the party by moving a resolution in a decisive meeting of the party’s supreme policy-making body,” a senior party leader told Firstpost.

“After removing all dissenters, Kejriwal will also quit the post of party convenor because he is overburdened with work as Delhi chief minister,” he further said.

The duo has already been removed from Political Affairs Committee (PAC), the apex decision-making body of the party. However, they are still members of the party’s national executive (NE) held on March 4. In addition, Bhushan continues to head the disciplinary committee.

Although Bhushan on Monday said he wanted to meet Kejriwal to put an end to the row which has seen him and Yadav being ousted from the PAC, his camp is not expecting any positive outcome from the dialogue with the party chief because “it was he who wanted the two senior leaders out of the decision making body”. They fear conspiracy to silence the voices speaking in their support.

“From floor management, backdoor intrigue to threats, all unfair practices were undertaken to oust Prashantji and Yogendraji. State representatives were informed late about the NE meeting so that they could not attend. If the proceedings of 21-member committee can be tampered with, how an impartial meeting of a bigger platform can be expected?” asked a leader of the Bhushan-Yadav group.

The rift within the AAP came out in the open soon after its thumping victory in the February 7 Delhi assembly election. Leaders of the two-year-old party are now divided into two groups – those associated with India Against Corruption movement and those with a socialist-leftist leaning. The infighting within the party became open on the day when Bhushan and Yadav were voted out of the PAC in the NE meeting.

Eleven out of 21 members of the NE voted in favour of the resolution moved to oust the two leaders, the rest eight members wanted to keep them in the PAC. All the members who supported the duo have socialist leanings. Apart from Bhushan and Yadav, they include Professor Anand Kumar, Professor Ajit Jha, Professor Rakesh Sinha, social activist Subhash Ware and activist Christina Samy.

The proposal to seek the Congress’ support to form the government failed to garner support in the May 18 PAC meeting of the party with five leaders - Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Gopal rai, Pankaj Gupta and Kumar Vishwas - voting against and four - Sanjay Singh, Ilyas Azmi, Manish Sisodia and Kejriwal voting in favour of the motion. Kejriwal refused accept the decision of the PAC following which an e-mail was sent to all members for consensus on the issue, said a middle-level leader.

While the Bhushan-Yadav faction has complains that the party is moving away from its core principles of inner democracy and transparency, Kejriwal and his loyalists suspect the duo of staging a coup against him.

Explaining the reasons behind the grouping, another leader told Firstpost, “They (Bhushan and Yadav) want to carry their baggage of ideology and do not have practical ideas. Being too idealist in a political party does not always work. You should be a little flexible. But at the same time, you must understand that the differences are not ideological. This is just about those who agree and don’t agree with Kejriwal.”

The party appears to be in no mood to tolerate any dissenting voice. On Monday, the party sacked its former MLA Rajesh Garg after he accused Kejriwal of trying to poach six Congress MLAs to form government last year.