UTTARAKHAND AAP UNIT CHIEF BALI JOINS BJP

DEHRADUN: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday suffered its second setback in less than a month in Uttarakhand with the exit of its state unit chief Deepak Bali who was elevated to the post on April 29 as part of the party’s overhaul after failing to win a single seat in the state elections.

Bali is the second top AAP leader to quit the party and join the BJP after the party’s presumptive chief minister Colonel Ajay Kothiyal (retired) switched sides.

In a brief resignation letter to AAP convener and Delhi chief minister - he also put it out on Twitter on Monday evening - Bali said he had been “uncomfortable” with how the party functioned.

Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and state president Madan Kaushik welcomed Bali into the party. “Though Bali was in the AAP, he remained ideologically a nationalist… They (AAP) are not what they try to pretend to be. Bali himself experienced it in AAP,” Dhami said. The former AAP leader, a huge critic of the BJP till recently, was effusive in his praise for Dhami. “AAP has been wiped out in Uttarakhand. The same will happened in Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and the whole country.”

“The way chief minister Dhami took major decisions during his previous term, we knew that we won’t be able to stop the BJP from winning in the assembly elections,” said Bali, who headed AAP’s election campaign committee in Uttarakhand for the state elections, and was to lead efforts to build the party from scratch in his new role as state unit chief.

Uttarakhand AAP unit’s Ashu Deori rebutted the BJP leadership which described Bali’s exit as the end of the road for the opposition party.

“@pushkardhami is saying that AAP is finished in Uttarakhand. Dhami ji, party is not made by its chief but ordinary voters. As long as this woman (in a photo putting up AAP’s poster) is there, no one can finish AAP”.

Like Ajay Kothiyal, Deepak Bali also contested the February elections but lost.