Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) national convener Arvind Kejriwal said if the BJP is not giving cash to voters, why it is “troubled” on the AAP asking the electorate to “take money from other parties”, but vote for the AAP.
He was responding to BJP leader Vijender Gupta’s allegation that the AAP was distributing pamphlets in Delhi’s slum areas asking people to take money from the BJP and the Congress but vote for the AAP.
Gupta had lodged a complaint in this regard last month, following which the chief electoral officer of Delhi Wednesday issued a notice to Kejriwal, who is the AAP’s national convener.
“We are saying that take money from other parties and vote for us. So what’s your problem? Does your party also give money? If not, then why are you so troubled?” Kejriwal said in a tweet targeting the BJP.
He also tagged Gupta’s update on Twitter that a BJP delegation will meet the chief electoral officer of Delhi at Kashmiri Gate. “BJP delegation will meet the Chief Electoral officer Delhi at Kashmiri Gate to file a complaint against @ArvindKejriwal for repeated abetment in bribing of voters of Delhi despite issue of notice to him by CEO Delhi,” Gupta had tweeted.
On Wednesday Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia has also accused BJP of indulging in horse trading, saying seven of his party’s MLAs in the national Capital have been offered Rs 10 crore each to join the saffron party. Sisodia also hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his comment that 40 Trinamool Congress MLAs in West Bengal are in touch with him and will desert their party once the BJP wins the general elections.
“It does not suit the Prime Minister to make such comments. He (Modi) should realise that India is a democratic country and he is here because of democracy,” the AAP leader said, alleging the BJP is trying to do the same thing in Delhi.
Meanwhile, calling North West Delhi’s BJP candidate Hans Raj Hans “ineligible”, Arvind Kejriwal urged voters of the constituency voters not to waste their votes on him. Kerjiwal tweeted “Hans Raj Hans is ineligible to fight from a reserved seat. He will finally be declared ineligible. The voters of North West Delhi should not waste their votes on him.”
He tagged a tweet of senior AAP leader Rajendra Pal Gautam, in which he claimed that Hans had deliberately concealed the information that he had converted to Islam recently and was not eligible to contest the polls from the North West Delhi seat which is reserved for the Scheduled Caste (SC) category.
However, the BJP said the AAP was levelling baseless allegations against its candidate. “They have lost mental balance sensing their defeat in the Lok Sabha election. With people deserting them, they are trying all sorts of propaganda to remain in the news,” said Ravindra Gupta, the head of Delhi BJP’s media committee for the Lok Sabha polls.
According to Gautam, he had cited news reports according to which Hans converted to Islam sometime ago and claimed that the singer-turned-politician had hidden this information from the Election Commission.
“Since North West Delhi is a reserved seat, it makes him ineligible to contest from there. He deliberately concealed this information from the EC. This is a complete violation of EC rules,” said Gautam. Hans is pitted against the Congress’s Rajesh Lilothia and the AAP’s Guggan Singh in North West Delhi. Polling for all the seven Lok Sabha constituencies of the national capital will be held on May 12 and the results will be announced on May 23.