As the battle for Delhi gets fiercer, the BJP on Thursday changed its poll strategy to counter the rival Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) wherein it has decided to ask AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal five questions on a daily basis till February 5 — the last day of electioneering.
The move is aimed at exposing Kejriwal’s “lies” in the run-up to Delhi Assembly polls. However, AAP leaders said that if the BJP had so many questions, they should have agreed to have an open debate.
This move of the BJP comes as a “strategy” to garner support of the people. BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy said, “In a review’s meeting chaired by Amit Shah on Thursday, it was decided that the party will ask the questions to the former Chief Minister daily. In its first set of questions, BJP wants to know why the Aam Aadmi Party took Congress’ support despite vowing not to do so. Our second question is why his Government failed to register any case against former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit during their 49-day rulingIJ”
Additionally, the BJP MP added that before the last Assembly elections, since Kejriwal had claimed that he had sufficient documents against Sheila Dikshit, why had he not put these documents in public domain until now.The party’s third question is that why Kejriwal took Z+ security despite making eloquent comments against the same.
“Kejriwal went to take oath (as CM) travelling in Metro and claimed that he would only travel in simple car. Then why he used SUVs for his workIJ Our fifth question is why did he travel in a private jet, which was against his principlesIJ Kejriwal even goes to Dubai in Business class to collect donations,” the BJP MP also said.
He said that the AAP leader should answer BJP’s questions because the people of Delhi also wanted to know about these facts. Asked about the strategy change, Rudy said “we are not feeling the pressure. The campaign is on... People of Delhi would certainly like to have a BJP Government in Delhi to partner the Government at the Centre.”
Delhi has been divided into 14 districts by Team Shah for this campaign. Efforts to reach out to voters have been intensified on the lines of Shah’s UP campaign.
Reacting to the five questions posed by the BJP on Thursday, the AAP said that when they were openly ready to debate this with BJP, why was the party hiding and issuing five statements at a time. An AAP spokesperson said, “We will sit and debate over 50 questions if they want. But they are more interested in running away from the debate.”
AAP’s senior leader Yogendra Yadav even said that the question posed by the BJP were done and dusted as the party had clarified these things several times. He tweeted, “The so-called five questions are a reflection of the panic that has crept in the BJP. They should at least come up with some new ones now.”
The party had earlier asked for an open debate with the BJP where they had several questions to ask. However, since BJP CM candidate Kiran Bedi refused to go ahead with the debate, AAP leaders feel that the five questions posed by BJP are just a way to deflect attention from real Delhi-centric issues. “They ran away from debate, now they won’t even take out a manifesto - clearly BJP has no agenda in mind and all they are doing is trying to play the blame game. If they really want answers from us, tell them to come at a public forum and have an open debate. Even we have questions for them,” said an AAP spokesperson.