After walking the plank, politics given a wide berth?

Dissident AAP leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, on Tuesday, gave clear indications that the duo would choose either of two possibilities — to float a new political party or focus on mobilising volunteers for movements on several issues.  Maintaining suspense over their future plans, they have not ruled out forming a political party after taking views of volunteers and well-wishers supporting them. Wrathful over the way Kejriwal was running the party, Bhushan said he and Yadav will have detailed discussions with their supporters from across the country at a meeting on April 14, which has been convened to channelise the positive energy of those AAP members who “felt betrayed” by the current leadership.

“It need not be a political party. But it could also be a political party depending upon what they want and what happens. My personal opinion is that we should right now concentrate on issues and movements rather than form a political party,” said Bhushan.  The lawyer, who had joined hands with Kejriwal over 10 years back during the RTI movement, said he felt “very sad” at the way he and Yadav were removed. “We need to continue to channelise their energy in a positive direction and one way of doing that would be to make an organisation which gets involved in major issues like land reforms, land acquisition, agriculture, environment and communalism. There are many serious issues facing the country where positive energy can be channelised,” he said.

On whether legal recourse would be explored to retain the name “AAP”, he said such a legal battle would be “very messy and distasteful”. 

“After all, AAP is just a name and a symbol, apart from a few assets etc. Volunteers will do whatever they want. They are very disillusioned today. They are feeling dejected,” Bhushan maintained.

Asked whether they will challenge in court the decision to remove them from the AAP National Executive, he did not rule out the possibility but added he was personally not in favour of it.

Bhushan claimed that Kejriwal was very desperate to capture power in Delhi after the lok Sabha poll debacle and continued his efforts just before dissolution of the Delhi  Assembly in November last year. He said Kejriwal even approached a social activist to speak to Rahul Gandhi to garner Congress support. “In November (2014), he approached Nikhil Dey and asked him to speak to Rahul Gandhi to get Congress support for Government formation,” Bhushan said. Bhushan also expressed that perhaps Kejriwal was “insecure” about Yadav’s presence in the party. “Perhaps he had that insecurity about Yadav. To my mind it was totally wrong because Yadav never wanted to displace him and become the convener.”