Accusations are failing to douse the simmering war in the Aam Aadmi Party with the latest one coming from the party’s National Executive (NE) member Rakesh Kumar Sinha, who alleged that the party ousted the old lokpal with “no substantial charges” against it.
In a letter addressed to party secretary Pankaj Gupta, Sinha, a ceramic engineer and professor, expressed his displeasure over neither being informed about the crucial NE meeting held on Sunday, nor explaining why the information was not passed on to him.
“I was surprised and thought that it must be a PAC meeting since I got no intimation and I had received an SMS from your office on the 18th that there will be no meeting before or after the NC meet. Your SMS saying that it was an emergency meeting is well taken but it still does not explain why I was not informed,” he wrote, while adding it was only through some journalists that he got to know about it.
In the following paragraph, Sinha talks about the treatment given to the outgoing lokpal and questioned why the case of party rebels Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav was not allowed to be investigated by the lokpal before taking such a “major decision”.
“I would also like to remind you that in the NE meeting of March 4 in which a decision was taken to remove Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav from PAC, it was also decided that charges against them will be referred to our internal lokpal, who had also expressed his intention to investigate these. Unfortunately no action was taken on this NE decision and the two were removed from the NE on the same uninvestigated and hence, unsubstantiated charges,” the letter read. He maintained that the outgoing lokpal Admiral l Ramdas should have been given adequate opportunity to name his successor as envisaged in the party’s rules.
He also expressed his displeasure over the removal of KK Seveda from the reconstituted disciplinary committee. On the party’s expansion plans, he wrote, “Also, Sanjay Singh is going to take up the matter of organisation in all the States. Does this mean that Mission Vistaar has been abandonedIJ”
