In the midst of reports regarding brewing differences within the AAP, a letter by Admiral Ramdas — party’s internal lokpal and former Navy chief — has pointed to the growth of two camps within the top leadership of the party due to an “abject breakdown in communication and mutual trust” and sought setting up of an independent group to deal with the situation.
The letter, written ahead of its national executive meet last week, also said the party must also work towards being more gender-sensitive party as neither its Political Affairs Committee (PAC) nor the Delhi Government has any woman in the top position. “During the past six to eight months, there has been an abject breakdown in communications and mutual trust amongst the topmost leadership of the party.
This has in my view led to the growth of two camps within the party and loose talk about conspiracies. This is unacceptable and shows that we are no different from any of the parties whom we criticise so vocally. I sincerely urge the entire leadership of the party. To stop listening to rumours and to discourage colleagues. Who continually bring negative feedback about each other,” Ramdas wrote in the letter.
The primary source of this conflict, reportedly, is the selection of candidates for the Assembly polls which has led to rift between two senior AAP leaders and PAC members — Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan. The leaders were also not in favour of the party’s decision to not contest Haryana elections last year. The letter says there was a crisis situation just ahead of Delhi polls over issues raised by Bhushan who, it claims, also threatened to resign if his concerns were not addressed.
“In end December 2014, there was a crisis situation brought about by Bhushan’s unhappiness with candidate selection and the decision-making processes. If not addressed, he said he would be forced to resign from the party and go public. To contain this, a special meeting was called in Delhi on January 3-4, 2015, where a decision was taken to refer the issue to the AAP lokpal, assisted by a specially selected team,” the letter said.
AAP sources have said that Arvind Kejriwal had tendered his resignation as the party’s national convener during the national executive meet earlier this week, but the move was vehemently opposed by members. The sources said that Kejriwal was upset after a section of party leaders raised the issue of him playing the dual role of Delhi Chief Minister and the party’s convener. Kejriwal is believed to have demanded more freedom to run the party.
In his letter, Ramdas said AAP needs to make efforts to address criticisms over its inner-party democracy. In the past, leaders like Shazia Ilmi have quit the party citing lack of inner-party democracy.
“There has been criticism within the party regarding decision-making and inner-party democracy. This needs to be further analysed by an independent group who should carry out an internal audit and make suitable recommendations in keeping with the constitution and the high standards of probity and ethics that we have charted for ourselves,” the letter added.
Pointing out the lack of gender-sensitive, Ramdas wrote, “We need to make many efforts in the direction of becoming a genuinely gender-sensitive party which will do far more than pay lip service to women’s empowerment and ensure that we work to improve women’s visibility and participation at all levels.
I personally find it difficult to defend AAP against accusations of being mainly a ‘boys’ club’, especially when we were not able to have even one woman in our team of Ministers! Women’s empowerment and justice has to go deeper and farther than mere security alone”. He also criticised the party for neglecting and taking its volunteers for granted. After the lok Sabha debacle, a splinter group called AAP Volunteers Vichar Manch (AVAM) was formed, raising issues related to the party. The group was later expelled.
“Volunteers are our lifeline. We neglected and took for granted our volunteers and their commitment, especially after the general elections in 2014. This may well have been one of the contributory factors for the emergence of AVAM. We need to learn the right lessons from this experience and put in place robust mechanisms and people to handle this resource,” Ramdas said.