Calling the allegations defamatory, Raghav Chadha, AAP's Punjab in-charge, tweeted, “Malicious, unfounded, fabricated, inflammatory insinuations made by Mr. Vishwas are not only demonstrably defamatory but redolent of promoting hatred ill-will, hostility in society and in particular against AAP, as well as supporters as also intending to create a situation of unrest.” The AAM Aadmi Party described as “malicious” and “unfounded” allegations made by rebel party leader Kumar Vishwas against AAP chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, whom he accused of hobnobbing with separatists.
Speaking to ANI, Vishwas said that during the 2017 elections, he warned Kejriwal not to go with “fringe elements”, separatists and forces associated with the Khalistani movement. “But he said, nahin ho gayeja (it will be done). One day, he told me… ‘ya toh main ek swantatra suba ka mukhyamantri banoonga (I’ll either be the chief minister of an independent state)…’ I then told him that’s separatism… To which he said, ‘Theek hai, toh mein swantantra desh ka pehla pradhan mantri nbanoonga (Ok, then I’ll be the first PM of an independent nation’.”
Calling the allegations defamatory, Raghav Chadha, AAP’s Punjab in-charge, tweeted, “Malicious, unfounded, fabricated, inflammatory insinuations made by Mr. Vishwas are not only demonstrably defamatory but redolent of promoting hatred ill-will, hostility in society and in particular against AAP, as well as supporters as also intending to create a situation of unrest.”
Asking the media not to report Vishwas’s allegations, he said, “In view thereof, it is forcefully submitted that in case any channel publishes/ circulated aids or provide platform to disseminate the same we shall be found forced to take stringent legal action which shall include the commission of the offences of abetment/ aiding him.”
Despite a deep rift with the party leadership, Vishwas, a founding member of the AAP and at one point among party leaders closest to Kejriwal and Sisodia, remains a member of the AAP, never having resigned. The party, too, has not expelled him.
Talk of Vishwas’s differences with Kejriwal and Sisodia started late 2016 amid murmurs from his camp that he was not being given responsibilities matching his stature.
In 2017, when AAP lost the Punjab polls and, a few months later, the Delhi municipal polls, the rift came out in the open. While senior AAP leaders alleged that Vishwas was in touch with the party’s Punjab MLAs and had tried to broker a deal between them and the BJP, he alleged a conspiracy against him.
While an uneasy calm prevailed between the two sides, with Vishwas even being made the AAP’s Rajasthan in-charge ahead of the 2018 Assembly polls, the relationship broke down when, in January 2018, the party didn’t nominate him to the Rajya Sabha.
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