AAP drama continues, Yogendra Yadav slams party, dubs showcause notice a ‘joke’

New Delhi: The infighting in AAP seems to be getting murkier by the day. AAP rebel leader Yogendra Yadav took to Twitter to mock the show cause notice given to him by the party.

Dissident leaders Yadav and Prashant Bhushan have been given two days to reply to the charges against them, failing which they might be shown the door.

In a final crackdown on rebel leaders, the Aam Aadmi Party on Friday sent a show-cause notices. Bhushan, Yadav, Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha were dropped from top panels of the party at the National Council meeting last month.

Bhushan had been heading the disciplinary committee until he was removed from the panel last month. The three-member committee is now headed by Dinesh Waghela and its other members are Pankaj Gupta and Ashish Khetan, all of them Kejriwal loyalists.

Replicating the India Against Corruption model, Yadav and Bhushan recently launched a new initiative called “Swaraj Abhiyan” to strengthen the concept of alternative politics across the nation.

In a move that could eventually lead to formation of a new political outfit, the AAP rebel faction constituted a 49-member committee to strengthen the new initiative and take it across the country.

The rebel AAP group will assess the viability of floating a new political outfit based on the response received by the initiative after six months.

The dissident AAP leaders stressed the need to launch a new “movement for alternative politics” in the country, while deciding not to quit the AAP voluntarily.

The Aam Aadmi Party, which was born out of the India Against Corruption model, on the other hand hinted that it would crack down on the dissident leaders.

The rebel AAP group led by Bhushan and Yadav admitted that the time was “not ripe” to launch a new political outfit immediately. “It is a new beginning. If today we announce of forming a new political party, then the danger will be the same which the AAP is facing. The emotion to challenge the AAP in a court or the Election Commission is right, but will lead to a ‘long and messy fight’,” Bhushan told the party volunteers and supporters at Swaraj Samwad.

After over eight-hour meet in Gurgaon, a resolution was reached to float a new initiative, called Swaraj Abhiyan, to establish the principle of “swaraj” across the nation and work for strengthening “alternative politics.”

The resolution was reached by voting in which only 25.45 per cent of the attendees voted in favour of quitting the AAP and forming a new party, while a majority (around 70 per cent) were in favour of remaining in the party and struggling for swaraj.