Denting Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s political image, former AAP MlA from Rohini, Rajesh Garg on Wednesday released an audio clip and accused him of trying to “poach” Congress MlAs before the Assembly was dissolved.
Following the allegations against Kejriwal, AAP leader in Maharashtra Anjali Damania quit the party. “I quit. I have not come into AAP for this nonsense. I believed him (Kejriwal). I backed Arvind for principles not horse-trading,” she tweeted. However, later in the evening, reports of Damania withdrawing the resignation did the rounds. AAP officials said they did not receive any official resignation.
The audio tape of purported conversation between Kejriwal and the former legislator, which dates back to July 2014, was recorded by Garg when Kejriwal had called him to discuss the state of affairs. In the audio, Kejriwal said that six Congress MlAs who were planning on breaking away from party should be asked for support. Kejriwal purportedly says in the recording,
“Why don’t you start working on breaking these six MlAs away from the Congress so that they can support AAP from the outside. The Congress won’t support us. We have been trying for the last one-and-a half months. These six Congress MlAs would have supported the BJP, but three of them are Muslims. They won’t support the BJP. Those six MlAs should support us.”
The conversation also included Kejriwal ostensibly saying that the party must not announce that they are ready to take Congress’ support because that would show them as being “desperate”.
According to Garg, when Kejriwal asked him to start “poaching” from the Congress, he distanced himself from the party. However, Garg claimed he had no clue how the audio was leaked. “I only emailed the recording to Kumar Vishwas during these elections because I was troubled by the corrupt candidates and mistreatment of volunteers. Vishwas asked for proof of muck within the party, so I sent the recording. I didn’t do anything after that so have no clue how the recording reached the media,” he told reporters.
Meanwhile, compounding the party’s problems, Asif Mohd Khan claimed that AAP leader Sanjay Singh had offered him a ministerial berth to ensure support from the Congress. " I have a CD of this meeting that was held at a media person's house where Sanjay Singh offered me a ministerial post and chairmanships for other Congress MlAs.
If Sanjay Singh denies my meeting , I will make this sting operation public" said Asif Mohd khan. The Congress leader also claimed that Manish Sisodia also held a meeting with him. Damania also tweeted later asking for a probe into all allegations and also asked for Yadav and Bhushan’s apology in 48 hours
Subsequently, AAP leader Ashish Khetan said that the party accepted that the audio may be authentic but there is nothing wrong in it. He said, “A disgruntled person from our party who was denied a ticket leaked the tape and we don’t have a copy of the recording.
But assuming that the tape is authentic, how can anyone levy the charge of horse-trading on Arvind KejriwalIJ I, in fact, welcome a public debate over the tape as I feel it should be discussed in detail as to the meaning of the content discussed in that conversation between Kejriwal and Garg.”
Khetan elaborated that at that time, majority MlAs didn’t want fresh elections and the political reality was that all parties were exploring the opportunity to form the Government. “The AAP has never denied the fact that we have a will to power because we feel that to succeed in our mission for political reforms, we have to win and form Government. Our MlAs were calling Arvind Kejriwal and saying that these six MlAs from the Congress could support the AAP.
We were open to that support because we wanted to form the Government as we felt that was a better thing for Delhi than for the BJP to form Government. Something of this sort only suggests political realignment. Nowhere in the conversation did Kejriwal refer to offering any sort of incentive to those six MlAs,” he added.