Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi MLA Amanatullah Khan resigned from his post within the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) of the party in a development that came late on the night of Monday, May 1. Khan quit after creating furore among the partymen by claiming that fellow AAP leader Kumar Vishwas was trying to engineer a coup within the party.
The AAP has seen a number of election defeats of late — the most recent being the Municipal corporation of Delhi elections — after which party's national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that there is a need to "go back to the drawing board" when it comes to the AAP's policies and strategies.
The controversy
Khan, an MLA from Okhla in Delhi, had on Sunday, April 30, sent out a post claiming that Kumar Vishwas — who had said on TV that there was need for "structural change" within the AAP — of trying to engineer a coup within the party, and that Vishwas had even met some party leaders to bring this about.
He had also said in the message that if Vishwas failed to orchestrate the coup, his back-up plan was to join the BJP. This is hardly the first time such speculation has been made, but if it did materialise, it would have been a body blow to the already-weakened AAP.
The WhatsApp message soon led to a war of words within AAP members. Around 30-35 of them even wrote to Kejriwal demanding strong action against him, even going so far as to call for his expulsion from the party. This led Kejriwal to call a party meeting late at night on Monday.
Khan stands by his remarks
At that meeting, Kejriwal read his partyment the riot act, effectively gagging them from speaking in public on the issue. Then, after some discussion, Khan tendered his formal resignation from the party's PAC. Vishwas, it may be noted, was not present at the meeting.
Khan, however, was adamant on his stand on Vishwas. He said after resinging from the PAC: "Kumar Vishwas is an RSS-BJP agent and Arvind ji will soon realise it. He [Vishwas] talks about disconnect between party volunteers and leadership, but he had invited [former Delhi Police Commissioner] BS Bassi and [National Security Advisor] Ajit Doval for his birthday party. It was Bassi who had arrested AAP MLAs and workers under false pretext."
