New Delhi, Apr 24 (PTI) Left leaders on Friday said AAP Rajya Sabha MPs joining the BJP was a “brazen betrayal” of public trust and that it was a result of the ruling party’s alleged misuse of investigation agencies.
The AAP suffered a jolt on Friday as seven of its Rajya Sabha MPs, including Raghav Chadha, Ashok Mittal and Sandeep Pathak, quit the party, with Chadha asserting that the Arvind Kejriwal-led party had strayed from its principles.
Harbhajan Singh, Rajendra Gupta, Vikram Sahni and Swati Maliwal were the other four parliamentarians in the group of seven.
CPI(M) Rajya Sabha leader John Brittas pointed out that this development follows an Enforcement Directorate (ED) raid against Mittal and that the Supreme Court has in the past cautioned against the use of central agencies for political ends.
“Yet we keep seeing the same pattern — an ED raid on Ashok Mittal and others and days later they join the BJP,” Brittas said.
“We still call India the mother of democracies,” he said.
The ED had raided Mittal’s business and residential premises in Punjab and Haryana as part of a FEMA probe on April 15, almost a fortnight after the AAP named him the party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, replacing Chadha.
CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said the AAP MPs elected to the Rajya Sabha on an anti-BJP platform should have resigned before switching sides.
“Joining the BJP after getting elected on an anti-BJP vote is a brazen betrayal of the electors’ trust and mandate. These MPs are free to change their politics, but have no right to insult their voters,” he said.
The AAP termed the resignation of the seven MPs a “betrayal of Punjab” and accused the BJP of engineering the split by using the fear of central agencies. PTI AO DIV DIV
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