AAP MLA slams Arvind Kejriwal for publicity fund

New Delhi: AAP MLA Pankaj Pushkar, who has openly criticised the party leadership on several issues, today trained his guns on chief minister Arvind Kejriwal over allocation of Rs 526 crores for publicity and termed it as an exercise of "self propogation".

Terming the employment of AAP workers in the Delhi government at "hefty" salaries as an "abuse of public money", the Timarpur MLA also questioned the appointment of 21 party legislators as parliamentary secretaries. He said the AAP was in serious danger of losing its way and was on a "slippery mode".

Speaking about the recent adverstisment by the Delhi government, Pushkar said, through this the Delhi government not only defied the Supreme Court, which clearly ruled that no government advertisments should try to glorify a politician, but also portrayed women in a regressive way.

Pushkar said he has written to Kejriwal over these issues, but there has been "no response from him for the past one month."

"Under a false technical garb that Kejriwal's pictures were not used, the Aam Aadmi Party tried to defend the obnoxious TV commercial where the name of Delhi CM was mentioned 11 times in just 2 minutes," Pushkar told a news conference.

Incidentally, there was no electricity in the room of the Vidhan Sabha where the conference was held. This led to confusion and delayed the event. The conference continued for a few minutes, but the electricity went off later, again to be resumed in few minutes.

"We found that there was power everywhere in the Vidhan Sabha, but the conference room," Puskhar said.

Lashing out at the Kejriwal government of passing a legislation to give legal protection to 21 AAP MLAs as parliamentary secretaries, he said it had set a bad example. "The passing of an act for the immunity of 21 parliamentary secretaries in haste too is a case of political impropriety. While similar orders were struck down by various High courts, it was unnecessary.

"The parliamentary secretaries will get a car whenever they are on official work and an office space in secretariat.

If such precedent is followed, then the UP government will have 121 such parliamentary secretaries. Also, there is no clarity on the issue as it involves public money," he said.

Pushkar openly sided with Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan during the internal rift in the party early this year. Although the two leaders were expelled from the AAP, no action was taken against him.