NEW DELHI — Arvind Kejriwal has allegedly hurled verbal abuses at senior leaders of Aam Aadmi Party Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, and claimed he wanted to form his own party after breaking away from AAP. These allegations surfaced on Friday night when an audio recording of a conversation allegedly between party chief Kejriwal and Umesh Singh, an AAP worker from Benaras.
"They haven't stopped at anything to defeat us in the Delhi elections... If it was any other party they would have been physically kicked out of the party," a voice, allegedly belonging to Kejriwal, says in the recording. "I want to walk out of AAP and form my own party."
This recording surfaces at a time when the party is riddled with conflict and mud slinging between senior party leaders. While Bhushan and Yadav have repeatedly alleged that Kejriwal and his supporters were turning away from AAP's founding principles of democracy, transparency and honesty in its inner-party functioning, the Kejriwal camp in turn have claimed the two leaders were trying to sabotage the party chief and the party's clean image and even plotted to defeat the party in the Delhi elections.
According to the audio recording, the authenticity of it which hasn't yet been verified, Kejriwal hurls abuses at Yadav, Bhushan, and AAP leaders Professor Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha. He alleges that Kumar and Jha have done several damaging things to the party in the past few days, and at least Kejriwal's core group of supporters "don't have black hearts."
Interestingly, Bhushan told Times Now on Friday that he was aware of the existence of the audio recording, and the content of it wasn't news to him. He told the channel that Singh had brought the recording to him a couple of days back.
In the recording, the Kejriwal allegedly says that he didn't want to have such arguments in his party and he would much rather leave the party and form his own separate political party than continue like this. "I congratulate you and others who are part of AAP, they are extremely capable leaders and it's a good team," he said, naming Kumar and Jha. "I have seen how they have done terrible things in the past few days."
Kejriwal allegedly says that he had agreed to Yadav and Bhushan's demands, but that they wanted "something else."
Appearing extremely upset with the situation, the Delhi chief minister allegedly uses strong abusive language against his party members repeatedly in the short recording.
AAP will have its crucial national council meeting on Saturday, where it is likely that Yadav and Bhushan will be voted out of the team.
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