AAP vs Congress Escalates as Ajay Maken Attacks Arvind Kejriwal

New Delhi: The opposition efforts to present a united front to the BJP in the 2024 elections took another hit today as Congress’s Ajay Maken launched a sharp attack on Aam Aadmi Party and accused it of being in league with the BJP. The AAP-Congress face-off had dominated the opposition’s first formal meeting in Patna on Friday. “On the one hand, Arvind Kejriwal is seeking support of the Congress. Then he goes to Rajasthan and gives statements against one of our seniormost leaders, a three-time Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, and Sachin Pilot, one of the very senior leaders and a former minister,” Mr Maken said in a video statement today. “So do they (AAP) really want the support of the Congress or make peace with us?” Mr Maken said. “What AAP’s chief spokesman said today — that is nothing new. They gave statements against the Congress even on the day of the all-party meet,” he added, accusing Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of being in league with the BJP. “The point is he (Mr Kejriwal) does not want to go to jail — for which all preparations have been made since he had indulged in corruption,” added the Delhi Congress leader, who have been hawkish on AAP for years. Mr Kejrwal had taken on the Rajasthan Chief Minister last week at a campaign rally in the state, where elections are due by the year-end. “When we were coming here, we saw Gehlot Saheb has put up his posters all over Ganganagar and around this stadium.

I want to tell him that if he had worked for the last five years, he would not have to do this,” Mr Kejriwal had said at a rally last Sunday. “Both the parties (Congress and BJP) are involved in corruption. During Vasundhara Raje’s government, Ashok Gehlot used to accuse them of corruption… when Ashok Gehlot’s government came to power, Sachin Pilot kept asking him to arrest Vasundhara Raje but Ashok Gehlot said, ‘I will not arrest her, she is like my sister’,” Mr Kejriwal had added. Bringing AAP and the Congress on board for a united opposition is one of the most challenging tasks undertaken by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The two parties have been at loggerheads since AAP swept the Congress out of power nearly a decade ago and has been growing at its cost since. After the party’s sweeping victory in Punjab last year, Mr Kejriwal is focussing on Congress-ruled Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Now, AAP has declared that it would not be part of the united opposition unless Congress publicly opposes the Centre’s executive order taking away the control over bureaucrats in Delhi. The Congress has been unwilling to spell out its stand, though party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi have said there is no question of supporting “anything moved by the BJP”. At Friday’s meeting, senior Congress leaders, including Mr Kharge, read out a “rap sheet” against AAP, including the statements by its leaders against the Congress.

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