Saturday, May 24, 2014
New Delhi: The troubled Aam Aadmi Party Saturday received twin blows with its founder member Shazia Ilmi and Capt G.R. Gopinath announcing their decisions to quit the party.
Ilmi who contested the Delhi state legislative assembly and the just concluded Lok Sabha elections unsuccessfully accused the party of not following internal democracy and marginalising her.
“I am quitting due to lack of inner democracy in a party that continuously talks about Swaraj (self-rule),” Ilmi said while levelling some serious allegations against the party and its chief Arvind Kejriwal.
Ilmi was not happy with the party’s decision to force her contest the Lok Sabha election from Ghaziabad seat of Uttar Pradesh after she refused to take on the Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi in her bastion Rae Bareli. She finished a poor fifth in Ghaziabad and forfeited security deposit after losing out by a margin of about 1,500 votes from R.K. Puram constituency in the December Delhi assembly elections.
While Ilmi announced her decision to quit AAP at a press conference, Capt Gopinath who founded India’s first low cost Air Deccan sent his resignation from France, citing increasing differences with the party leadership. In a recent blog Capt Gopinath had accused Kejriwal of indulging in political antics saying it may not go down well with the public and could hurt both Kejriwal and AAP politically.
Kejriwal is currently under judicial custody and lodged at Delhi’s Tihar Jail since May 21 when he refused to furnish the mandatory bond of Rs. 10,000 to seek bail in a deformation case filed against him by senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Nitin Gadkari. He will have to stay put in the prison at least till June 6 when the case is taken up for hearing in the court.
While Kejriwal opted to go inside the prison to create news and sympathy in his favour following AAP’s poor show in the Lok Sabha elections in which it won just four seats - all from Punjab - the decision has not gone down well with many within the AAP as both Ilmi and Gopinath stated that they were in agreement with this decision.
“There is no internal democracy in the party… There is no collective decision making in the party,” Ilmi, a former TV journalist, said, adding that merely blaming certain politicians and corporate houses for corruption in the country would not help the cause of fighting corruption.
Ilmi clarified that she has no plans of joining any other party.
By Ajay Jha Correspondent
Gulf News 2014. All rights reserved.
