AAP leader Gopal Rai at the party’s national council meet on Saturday. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna)The AAP’s National Council, the party’s highest policy-making body, Saturday resolved to engage in “mutual cooperation” with those working to defeat the BJP in the 2019 polls, while also bracketing the BJP and the Congress in the same category.
The council, following a day-long meeting, decided that apart from doing its part in states where the AAP is in a strong position, the party will extend all possible cooperation to defeat the Narendra Modi government, AAP’s Delhi convenor Gopal Rai said.
During the day, in his address to the council, comprising coordinators from all states, Kejriwal took on the Congress, saying: “Congress workers are the first to celebrate and distribute sweets when police raids are conducted on me.”
“We will have to realise that we are up against big forces. And it isn’t just the BJP. All of them are all the same… ye saare mile hue hain,” Kejriwal said, challenging the Centre to share a few files with him. He also remarked that in the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh assembly elections, the Congress did not win, “but the BJP lost”.
“They (BJP government) had taken away 400 files from our government to scrutinise. But they did not find anything. So essentially, we got a clean chit from Modiji. I dare Modiji to share four files with us. One on Rafale, one on Sahara-Birla diaries, share two files. We will send you to jail,” he said.
Rai said that the council passed resolutions and decided that AAP’s campaign for the 2019 polls will have have four components — “farmers’ distress, failure of Modi government on the women’s security front, corruption, including in Rafale deal, and the good work done by the Kejriwal government in the fields of education and health.”
Rai said, “The party will field candidates in Delhi, Haryana, Goa and Punjab with all its strength.” When it comes to other states, the state units have been directed to submit reports on the party’s organisational strength in their respective areas to the Political Affairs Committee (PAC).
Incidentally, Chandni Chowk MLA Alka Lamba, who was in the eye of a controversy over an assembly resolution on Rajiv Gandhi’s Bharat Ratna, stayed away from the meeting. Rai said that all party MLAs were invited to the meeting. Poet-politician Kumar Vishwas, who has fallen out with the party leadership, also skipped.
In his 14-minute speech, Kejriwal alleged that the Centre has deliberately posted the “worst officials” to work in the Delhi government. “I am perhaps the only Chief Minister in the country and possibly the world, who does not have the power to post even a peon,” he said.
“They used all the agencies against us. CBI as well as the police raided me. They want to humiliate and insult us. They made fun of my cough at an event . But Anna (Hazare) had said that we should have the strength to digest insults and personal barbs… They have created an atmosphere of fear across the country, lynchings are happening frequently in UP. They did not even spare a policeman. We are facing big forces,” the AAP chief said.
