Kejriwal may not have last laugh

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal used the threat of quitting as convener of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in a well-crafted strategy to throw out senior advocate Prashant Bhushan and ideologue Yogendra Yadav from its highest decision making body of Political Affairs Committee (PAC) on Wednesday, but spurt in the party volunteers'' anger across the country may boomerang on him in the coming days and may even lead to a split of AAP, leaving him with just his Delhi gang while the rest in the states go with Bhushan and Yadav.

To pre-empt any possible split of the AAP, the Kejriwal camp is drawing up a plan to overhaul all the party units in Delhi and other states to fill up all party bodies with the loyalists. Even as the social media campaign against Kejriwal gained momentum, a Kejriwal aide said: "All units of

the party, from the centre to the states to the districts, will be restructured. We won''t allow any efforts at a takeover to succeed." A clever Yadav, however, dismissed the charge of attempting split of the party as he tweeted: "Flood of messages of solidarity and outrage from volunteers, I appeal to all that we retain our faith in the idea of the Aam Aadmi Party." It is Yadav whom the Kejriwal camp dreads more than Bhushan as a political threat to the Delhi chief minister since his advocacy for AAP to spread out across the country can diminish Kejriwal''s clout. AAP is clearly inching towards a split unless Kejriwal relents and allows Yadav and Bhushan the position they held as the founder members of the party. Campaign has been started by the volunteers on any number of the social media sites to nail down Kejriwal for manipulating expulsion of Bhushan and Yadav by an 8-11 vote, charging them with "indiscipline" and "sabotage." The duo did not quit the party out of humiliation as Kejriwal expected. Instead, they are now mobilising the party''s state units to push Kejriwal confined to just Delhi while they take up promotion of the party through membership drive to get ready for electoral battles in as many states as they can. Kejriwal has been quite clear since they day his AAP made the landslide victory in Delhi Assembly elections that he will remain focused in Delhi to consolidate the gains. He has also distanced himself from what he claims as Yadav''s idea of contesting seats across the country during the Lok Sabha elections last year.