In an apparent effort to end the continued ambiguity and power struggle in the local party set-up and re-activate its State cadre, the Aam Admi Party (AAP) has dissolved all its committees in Maharashtra and appointed its national secretary Pankaj Gupta as in-charge of the party’s State unit.
In a statement issued from New Delhi on Thursday, the AAP’s central leadership said: “In the ongoing process of strengthening the organisation in various States, the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) has decided to dissolve all bodies in Maharashtra. National Secretary Pankaj Gupta will be in-charge of the State and under him a team will work on organisation building in the State.”
“The new structure will take shape in a very short time. All party members are requested to cooperate with this team in organisation building,” the AAP statement said.
Elaborating on her party’s decision to “dissolve all bodies” in Maharashtra, AAP’s national spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon told The Pioneer on Thursday evening: “Our central party leadership has undertaken the dissolution of all committees in the State as part of the “Mission Vistar” embarked upon by us early this year. Owing to the Delhi Assembly elections, we had not set into motion the process of expanding the party set-up in Maharashtra”.
“The task we are undertaking in Maharashtra is akin to the one already carried out in Punjab, where we have put in a proper organisational structure and are in the process of expanding it. As far as Maharashtra is concerned, our national leader Ashutosh and secretary Pankaj Gupta have already done some ground work for putting in place a new organisational structure in the state. In the coming months, Pankaj Gupta will be working towards re-building and expanding the State party unit in a big way,” Preeti said.
Though the AAP has chosen not to pinpoint exact reasons for its decision to dissolve all the committee at the committees at the State, district and city levels, informed sources in the party said that by dissolving the party’s existing committees at various levels, it wanted to erode the authority of party’s former State convenor Mayank Gandhi, who continued to dabble in running the State party in a manner he deemed fit despite his not having any assigned role in the State unit.
“Gandhi is AAP’s national executive committee member. He has no role to play in the state party unit. Despite that he has been interfering in the running of the Maharashtra AAP unit,” a senior state AAP leader said.
Gandhi, it may be recalled, had joined an issue with AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal in June last year, by asking his party leadership to release the minutes of the party’s National Executive (NE) meeting held on March 4 2014, at which its senior leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav were removed from the PAC.
Reacting to the AAP’s decision to dissolve all committees in Maharashtra, an upset Gandhi tweeted: “Beautifully functioning Maharashtra teams dissolved. Sad that politics has won.”
“Two types of politics ~one that works with the people on ground and other that do ‘chaplusi’ in Delhi. The second type has won. Jai Ho !,” Gandhi elaborated in another tweet.
Sources said that the second reason for its decision to dissolve all the committees in Maharashtra was to remove the “ambiguity” over the role of AAP’s another former State convenor Anjali Damania, who had quit the party ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly polls in June, 2014. Despite her having quit the AAP, Damania has continued to be associated with the party, an act that has caused considerable confusion not just among the people but also in the rank and file of the party.
The third reason for the AAP to embark upon it what it calls as an exercise to “rebuild and expand” the party is to consolidate the organisational set-up in the wake of a split witnessed early this year, when a sizeable number of supporters of Yogendra Yadav left with him after he set up Swaraj Abhiyan which is currently trying hard build its base in Maharashtra.
Reacting to Arvind Kejriwal’s decision to “dissolve all bodies” of the party in Maharashrtra, AAP’s former Thane city unit convenor and Swaraj Abhiyan’s current Thane unit president Samir Pradhan said: “This kind of cosmetic exercise of dissolving all committees and making an outsider like Pankaj Gupta as in-charge of the party will not help the AAP in any way The AAP has over the past one year remained a dormant party. It is merely a political party that thrives on publicity in media. It has failed to reach out to people at the grass-root level”.
Pradhan had quit AAP in March this along with most of the office-bearers and scores of party workers from Thane and joined the organisation set-up by Yogendra Yadav, after the latter (Yadav) and Prashan Bhushan were thrown out of the Arvind Kejriwal-led party early this year.