New Delhi: Aam Aadmy Party leaders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan have written a letter to party volunteers clarifying their stand on the issues and asking the party Lokpal to probe the charges leveled against them by other party leaders.
Yesterday senior AAP leaders Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh, Gopal Rai and Pankaj Gupta held a press conference where they alleged that Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan and Shanti Bhushan worked against the party and made statements to malign the image of the party.
The letter jointly written by Prashant and Yogendra clarifies that neither Bhushan nor Yadav ever conspired to make later the national convener replacing Arvind Kejriwal as alleged by Kejriwal supporters in the party.
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Yadav and Bhushan tell the reasons why the differences surfaced within the party. The letter lists six reasons that lead to the rift in the party.
1.After the Lok Sabha election results Arvind Kejriwal wanted to form the government in Delhi with support from Congress MLAs, Bhushan and Yadav opposed.
2.Following the debacle in general elections last year, Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and Ashutosh demanded that all the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) members resign so Kejriwal could form a PAC of his own choice, Bhushan and Yadav opposed.
3.State units in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir wanted to contest the assembly elections that were held last year. Bhusan and Yadav supported the decision but Kejriwal vetoed.
4.In July lat year, posters were put up in the Muslim majority areas alleging that Muslim MLAs from Congress had shifted their allegiance to BJP. The posters were provocative and communal so Yogendra Yadav made a statement condemning the posters and calling them against the party's ideals. His statement was called anti-party and undisciplined.
5.The party volunteer Karan Singh, who floated an organization named AVAM with ex-volunteers of the party, was accused of sending an SMS to volunteers urging them to join BJP. Prashant Bhushan who was the chief of discipline committee wanted a thorough investigation in the matter so he was accused of supporting AVAM.
6.Bhushan and Yadav did not agree with the candidate selection during the Delhi assembly elections as the conduct of few of the candidates was not found to be as per the standards of the party. They demanded an enquiry by the party Lokpal into the matter that lead to the differences in the party.
The duo further said that they maintained silence and waited for the Delhi elections to be over. Then on February 26 meeting of the National Executive, they again raised the issues. The demands made by them in the meeting were:
1.They demanded enquiries in the matters of bogus donations of Rs 2 crore and of the liquor found in the godown of one of the MLA.
2.The decisions related to state matters of the party should be taken by state units, everything should not be decided in Delhi.
3.They demanded internal democracy and transparency in the party matters and asked regular meeting of PAC and National Executive.
4.The voice of volunteers should be heard and respected.
The eight page letter is written in Hindi is very elaborately discusses every issue that led to such a high pitched rift in the party. They have also attached documents proving their innocence in the whole matter.
