Senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Mayank Gandhi on Saturday mounted pressure on his party leadership to release the minutes of the party’s National Executive (NE) meeting held on March 4, at which its senior leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav were removed from the Political Affairs Committee (PAC).
In his second blog post written after the ouster of the two senior AAP leaders from the party’s PAC, Gandhi asked the party leadership to make public the minutes of the March 4 NE meeting so that the volunteers could become privy to the decisions taken at the meeting.
“I am hoping that the minutes of the March 4 NE are published soon. In my blog, I have given some glimpses of the happenings in the NE, but the complete minutes should be in the public domain. My description could have some shortcomings and may contain some probable bias, but the minutes will be authentic records. The volunteers should request for the same. This will strengthen the party and volunteers will become privy to the decisions taken,” Gandhi wrote in his latest blog post.
Making a strong case for video-recording the deliberations of all NE meetings and letting the volunteers to view the same, Gandhi recalled that video recording was one of the party workers’ demands during the joint draft committee meetings on Jan lokpal in 2011. “All minutes of the meeting signed by all members in all committees in the country should be released on the next day of the meeting,” he said.
In his earlier blog written on Wednesday, Gandhi had indirectly suggested that the Arvind Kejriwal camp manipulated the ouster of Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav from the AAP — through his revelation that while the two senior members had offered to quit the party’s PAC, but were sacked from the same at the behest of Manish Sisodia and others.
Gandhi, who had addressed his earlier blog on Wednesday to volunteers, enlarged the target area, by addressing his second blog post to “Volunteers, Supporters and donors”, and asked the volunteers to propose among other things the reconstitution of the party’s National Executive and PAC.
Maintaining that through his earlier blog post he had challenged the gag order imposed on him by sections of the party against informing the volunteers about the deliberations at the March 4 NE meeting, Gandhi said: “Having heard Kejriwal speak hundreds of times on transparency, participation, accountability and the need to stay away from arrogance, it has built a strong conscience in me. We must follow this higher consciousness, as a party. My blogs are not against any individual nor a challenge to the leadership. That is not how I function.”
Alluding to the personal attacks being made against him by AAP functionaries like Ashish Khetan for the stand he had taken in his first blog and a demand for his ouster made by some members from Mahara-shtra (like Anjali Damania, whom he has not named), he said that he was prepared to pay price for his “well thought out and conscious decision to write the blogs to uphold the higher principle of transparency”.