KEJRI CULT PREVAILS, AAP WILL HAVE NO OTHER FACE

The seeds of a personality cult were embedded in the poll campaign of the AAP with the party’s top leaders, Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, doing their mite to create a larger than life persona for Arvind Kejriwal.

It is rather strange then that the two leaders are now seeking to disengage from the very cult that they had carefully nurtured and sought to replace it with a laudable creed called inner party democracy.

Arvind Kejriwal, too, having got an overwhelming mandate, is now concentrating on consolidating his hold over a rag-tag party of volunteers of all hues. It did not take much stock taking for him to realise that what he essentially needs are ‘yes men’ and ideologues like Yogendra Yadav and lawyer activists like Prashant Bhushan need to be cut down to size before they become an alternate power hub within the party, more in view of their rather sanctimonious approach to politics.

The public slugfest between Kejriwal and the Bhushan-Yogender duo was leading to a showdown and the floodgates opened in the national executive meeting on Wednesday with both Bhushan and Yadav being ousted from the party’s apex decision-making Political Affairs Committee.

Party spokesman Kumar Vishwas made the announcement after a nearly six-hour meeting of the National Executive. As things stand, Bhushan and Yadav will be assigned some nondescript jobs, where their interface with the media will be limited. Apparently, Kejriwal alone wants to be perceived as the face of the party.

Bhushan, a Supreme Court lawyer and an AAP founder, told the media: "We have been

told that for the time being we are no longer in the PAC." He declined to elaborate and walked away, looking somewhat shaken. Speaking separately, Yadav said the AAP decision would be announced by the party and he was no more authorized to make announcements on behalf of the AAP. "As a disciplined worker of the party, I will try to fulfill whatever role is assigned to me to the best of my capacity." He has reportedly been given charge of the Kisan Morcha. Yadav has also been removed from the post of party's national spokesperson. In the National Executive's meeting, 11 members voted in favour of shunting out Yadav and Bhushan from the PAC while eight votes were cast against. The National Executive also rejected Kejriwal's offer to resign as the national convenor. It is understood that the two camps were unable to reconcile their differences over whether AAP needs to contest elections in other states or not; the need to abandon the personality centric campaign; and the lukewarm post-poll response of the AAP to transparency and accountability.