A new political party may be on the cards for rebel AAP leaders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan who have been expelled from the party’s top echelon. Mulling their future course of action, the duo has convened a meeting of their supporters on April 14 in which the prospects of forming a separate party is likely to be discussed. “Prashant and I along with our supporters and well-wishers have decided to meet on BR Ambedkar’s birthday, which falls on April 14,” said Yadav, adding that thousands of supporters and well-wishers of AAP were deeply disturbed about what was happening and want to see a way in which some of these things can be redressed. Asked whether they are exploring legal recourse as both he and Bhushan called the March 28 National Council meeting “illegal and unconstitutional”, Yadav said he personally does not favour wasting time in taking the matter to court. However, Bhushan, being a lawyer himself, has not ruled out the possibility yet.

Anticipating his expulsion as well as of Bhushan from AAP, Yadav said the AAP leadership would not stop before throwing him and Bhushan out of the party and both of them were ready for it. He said he will not resign on his own. “Going by what we have witnessed in the last one month that will be the most natural consequence. I thought initially that sidelining us was enough for them. Then I thought maybe they just want to throw us from the Political Affairs Committee, then it is the National Executive and my own sense is that this whole farce is being played out in the true spirit of Stalinist purges and it would stop only after our expulsion from the party,” he added.

Yadav and Bhushan were expelled from the National Executive at a meeting of the National Council on March 28, weeks after they were removed from party’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC). “The questions that Prashant and I have raised are not individual questions. There is nothing personal about these questions. We would pose the same questions to volunteers across the country whose voice we have raised and who have been calling to say that they support us. We would meet them and then decide what is to be done,” he said.