AAP, BJP spar as Kejriwal ‘stopped’ at Dec 16 event
NEWDELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government on Saturday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of allegedly disrupting chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s speech at an event to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the December 16 gang rape.
The BJP denied the charge. Those who attended the event said that Kejriwal was forced to stop his speech midway because of alleged disruption from some people sitting in the front row of the auditorium at Constitution Club.
The security personnel escorted him out soon after the ruckus.
The AAP’S Twitter handle shared a video of the event, claiming that a few BJP workers did not let Kejriwal speak and “stopped” him from paying tributes to the victim.
The party said a few “BJP people” disrupted the CM’S speech as soon as he started talking about street lights and CCTV cameras.
“Ashamed of you as a human for scuttling a programme being held in the memory of late Nirbhaya! Shame on you Manoj Tiwari (Delhi BJP president). Delhi will never forgive you Manoj Tiwari,” media advisor to the chief minister, Arunoday Prakash, said in a tweet.
The event, Nirbhaya Chetna Diwas, was organised at Constitution Club by Nirbhaya Jyoti Trust, founded by the parents of the gangrape victim in 2013.
Delhi BJP vice-president Rajiv Babbar denied the charges and accused Kejriwal of playing politics from such a platform.
“The charges are baseless. BJP has no role in it,” Babbar told Hindustan Times.
Questioning Kejriwal’s intentions, he said it was Delhi CM who “started playing politics”.
“I was told by the people
present there, as I reached with Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari just after the incident, that the CM started blaming the Centre for not giving space to the state government to fix CCTV cameras. This was objected by the crowd,” Babbar said.
According to people present at the function, a group of participants were ‘unhappy’ with the CM attacking the ‘Centre’ for ‘hampering’ his government’s proposal to install CCTV cameras.
“They (BJP workers) did not let him (Kejriwal) speak. They did not even spare a platform where everyone had gathered to pay tribute to the brave girl Nirbhaya,” a party leader said.