Former Aam Aadmi Party MlA Rajesh Garg on Tuesday alleged that during Government formation, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal had given his consent to fake calls made to party MlAs in the name of senior BJP leaders Nitin Gadkari and Arun Jaitley offering them money to support the BJP. Garg has alleged that the plan was to accuse the BJP of horse-trading. The former AAP MlA said that he, along with other MlAs, had received calls offering money to support the BJP and this was done with Arvind Kejriwal’s consent. He also alleged that all the calls were made through unknown numbers. Garg claimed that police had arrested a person on his complaint of receiving fake calls from Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s office offering him Rs10 crore, who was later released on AAP’s intervention.
“During the initial phase of Government formation, I got calls from someone who claimed to be calling from Arun Jaitley’s office offering Rs10 crore to support BJP. I took a screenshot of the number and lodged a police complaint. Then I got a call from Sanjay Singh asking me to withdraw the complaint. I didn’t withdraw but they managed to get him released,” he alleged. The former MlA from Rohini claimed that several other AAP MlAs had raised the issue of getting fake calls from Jaitley and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s office at a meeting of party legislators. He further said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took the whole matter very lightly and laughed it off.
Garg had recently accused the Delhi Chief Minister of trying to poach six Congress MlAs to form the Government in Delhi last year, leading to his suspension from the party on March 16. He had recorded a telephonic conversation between him and Kejriwal, which later surfaced and was circulated in the media. In October last year, he had questioned Kejriwal about the internal party democracy and also on whether he should have consulted people on conducting fresh polls in Delhi.
The fledgling party is going through a major crisis although Kejriwal has stressed that everything is alright. The bitter infighting in the party and the crackdown on dissidents, who had challenged Kejriwal’s leadership, have now spilled into the open with Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan having been kicked out of the National Executive (NE). AAP also unceremoniously sacked its internal lokpal Admiral (retd) l Ramdas after he criticised the party leadership.