The Aam Admi Party (AAP) has suffered another major desertion from its ranks on the heels of the resignations by its senior functionaries Shazia Ilmi and Captain GR Gopinath, with the party’s Maharashtra unit convenor Anjali Damania quitting the party ahead of the State Assembly polls.
In a letter addressed to her party colleagues on Wednesday evening, Damania announced her decision to quit the AAP. She, however, did not attribute any reason for her decision to resign from the Arvind Kejriwal-led party.
In her letter to her party colleagues, Damania stated: “Dear Colleagues, with a heavy heart I am ending my association with AAP. My greatest regards for Arvind, who is like an elder brother. All I want to request is that please do not have any conspiracy theories of my exit.”
Assuring her party colleagues that she would not compromise on her values, Damania asked the media to “respect” her privacy. “I have never and will never compromise my values. I request the media to respect my privacy. Kindly excuse me, I do not wish to state anything except that I care a lot for my party and my best wishes are always with it,’’ Damania added.
Reacting to Damania’s resignation from the AAP, party’s senior leader from Mumbai and its national executive member Mayank Gandhi tweeted: “Anjali is a great asset to the nation. We must convince her to continue to lead Maharashtra AAP”.
Damania’s decision to dissociate herself from the AAP comes in the wake of her party’s debacle in the State and her own personal defeat in the lok Sabha polls from Nagpur constituency, in which she had unsuccessfully contested against former BJP president Nitin Gadkari.
Gadkari won the Nagpur seat, by trouncing sitting Congress MP Vilas Muttemwar Muttemwar by an impressive margin of 2,84,828 votes.
In the Nagpur polls, Damani stood at the fourth position in terms of votes polled. She secured 69,081 votes, as against the 5,87,767 votes polled by winning candidate Gadkari, 3,02,939 votes bagged by Congress’ Muttemwar and 94,433 votes polled by the BSP’s Mohan Ramrao Gaikwad.
Damania, who joined India Against Corruption (IAC) movement of Anna Hazare in 2011 and later moved to the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP that came into being after the IAC’s split, shot to fame in 2012 after she accused Gadkari of having business partnership with NCP chief Sharad Pawar,
However, Gadkari had not only contested her “baseless” allegations, but he also filed a defamation case against her.
Meanwhile, AAP’s Maharashtra unit secretary Preeti Sharma-Menon has resigned from her post in protest against the state party leadership’s refusal to re-constitute its various committees in the wake of the party’s debacle in the recent lok Sabha polls.
Confirming her resignation from the State AAP secretary’s post, Menon told “The Pioneer” on Thursday: “ Yes. I have resigned my post as the secretary of the state party unit. But, I am very part the AAP and will continue to work actively for the party in the forthcoming State Assembly polls. If I resigned from my post, it was because I agreed with the views of the party cadres that the various committees needed be re-constituted in the wake of AAP’s defeat in lok Sabha polls in the state. However, the state party leadership is not in favour such a re-constitution of the committees”.