Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was forced to postpone its meeting convened on Wednesday by the leader of Opposition in Punjab Vidhan Sabha Harpal Singh Cheema to discuss the strategy ahead crucial Assembly session.
The rebel faction, led by the ‘ousted’ leader of Opposition Sukhpal Singh Khaira, chose to stay away from the party’s legislative wing’s meeting and attended the volunteers’ convention at Kotkapura, and once again declaring itself to be “the real AAP”.
The meeting would now be held on August 24, the day from which the session will start.
That was not all! The rebel group also gave up the “yellow” colour, symbolic to martyr Bhagat Singh, adopted by AAP, with green — a symbol of Punjab’s farming community.
Notwithstanding, AAP’s state leadership expressed hope that the party will put up a “united face” in the ensuing session as the talks with the dissenters were on.
The rebel group, comprising eight MlAs, had already made it clear that they would not be attending the legislators’ meeting on Wednesday alleging that it was “deliberately called to coincide with their volunteers' convention at Kotkapura”.
“We have postponed the meeting of our party legislators to August 24 and it will be held at 11 am at the Vidhan Sabha,” said Cheema, who is also Dirba MlA.
He said that Kanwar Sandhu had, a day before, stated that they wanted to attend the meeting but it was deliberately scheduled for today so that they could not attend it. “Therefore, we postponed it and they are now welcome to join us in the meeting,” he said adding that the invitations for the meeting will be sent again to all the MlAs.
At the same time, Cheema ruled out the possibility of any “embarrassing” position of the AAP which is currently marred by severe infighting. “They may do whatever they want to do outside. But in the Vidhan Sabha, they will have to go by the party line,” he made it clear.
On the other hand, the rebel faction is referring itself to be the “real AAP” maintaining that they would not be taking separate seats in the House during session.
AAP was hit by its worst ever crisis in Punjab after the party high command unceremoniously removed Khaira as its leader of opposition with a Dalit leader Cheema. Khaira was backed by seven party MlAs, out of total 20.
The crisis within the AAP intensified to such a level that the state unit is vurtualy being run by two power centres — one representing the dissenters and other owing allegiance to the delhi leadership.
The situation became so worse that the rebel faction has “dissolved” the party’s state organizational structure and set up its own political affairs committee and appointing Khaira as ad-hoc state president till the formation of the new organizational structure.