Several talented leaders have been left by the wayside, say party insiders, a fact that will hit AAP hard in election year.
New Delhi: The exodus of senior leaders from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is likely to continue as there are many others too who feel used and left out by the party brass, sources have told ThePrint.
Senior leaders Ashutosh and Ashish Khetan quit the AAP last month, within a week of each other, raising doubts about the health of a party that arrived on the scene as a champion of inner-party democracy.
The two are among at least a dozen senior leaders and strategy-makers who have either resigned or been expelled since the party’s spectacular return to power in Delhi three years ago.
Also read: Some expelled, some resigned: Ashutosh joins a long list of leaders who’ve left AAP
Several others admit they are losing their patience waiting for AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal to recognise their work.
“Look how the party treated former Delhi MLA Jarnail Singh,” said an MLA from Punjab.
“He was made to resign from his seat in Delhi and brought here to Punjab to contest against five-time chief minister Parkash Singh Badal (in the 2017 assembly election),” he added.
“He was appointed the co-convener of the party’s Punjab cell, but nobody knows where he is and what he is doing now,” the MLA said.
‘Where are we now?’
Jarnail Singh, who contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on an AAP ticket from West Delhi, lost to the BJP’s Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma.
He came to the limelight after he threw a sandal at senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram at a press conference in 2009, reportedly angry over the party’s bid to field riots-accused Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar as candidates for the Lok Sabha polls. Their candidature was later withdrawn.
When approached by ThePrint for his take on the claims, Jarnail Singh refused to comment.
“In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, we won four seats. But look where we are now,” the source said.
“The party is on the path to self-annihilation and the credit goes to the leadership in Delhi,” he added.
Also read: Ashutosh says AAP got him to use his caste name in 2014
“Do we have any strategy to consolidate our gains in Punjab… I don’t think so,” he said.
Punjab has been the only state apart from Delhi where the AAP has been able to establish itself as a serious player. In the 2017 assembly election, the party emerged as the second largest player with 20 of the state’s 117 seats.
Although a distant second to the Congress’ 77 seats, the nearly six-year-old party still bested the state’s other big player, the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal), which won 15 seats.
It was also the only state that voted AAP candidates to the Lok Sabha in 2014, giving the party four of the state’s 13 seats.
An ‘epidemic of disgruntlement’
The source cited Adarsh Shastri, who resigned as an Apple marketing executive to contest the 2015 Delhi polls, as another example of a leader the party had left by the wayside.
Shastri, the source said, was promised a bigger role but ultimately did not get a ministerial berth.
He added that the exit of leaders such as Ashutosh and Khetan fit into the same pattern as the party leadership “didn’t know how to accommodate its members”.
Another case in point is Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson Rajmohan Gandhi, the party’s candidate for the East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency in 2014.
The US-based academician joined the party in February 2014 amid much fanfare, but has been absent from the scene since his loss to the BJP’s Maheish Girri.
“The leadership never made any attempt to use his talent and expertise for the party’s benefit. And he is not the only one, there are many,” the source told ThePrint.
Also read: Is Kejriwal a true politician or unthinking dictator? The question that’s splitting AAP
A source in the party’s Punjab unit cited veteran banker Meera Sanyal as yet another example of the party’s failure to exploit the full potential of members.
Despite her experience of more than 30 years in the banking sector, she has barely been consulted on the party’s economic matters since the 2014 election, the source added.
Sanyal, AAP’s candidate for the Mumbai South Lok Sabha constituency in 2014, lost the election to A.G. Sawant of the Shiv Sena.
Punjab gains in peril
There is also deep resentment in the party’s fractured Punjab unit over what is seen as the AAP leadership’s pullback from stated ideological positions against rivals.
Party sources in Punjab told ThePrint that it had been asked to “go easy” on the Congress, which was the target of the 2011 Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement, to keep hopes of an alliance alive.
Leaders of the Congress are also accused of involvement in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, which makes the idea of an alliance all the more unpalatable to some sections in the party.
Also, there is still much heartburn over Kejriwal’s apology to former state revenue minister Bikram Singh Majithia of the SAD, whose alleged involvement in drug trafficking was among the foci of the AAP’s Punjab campaigns.
Kejriwal had apologised to Majithia to get him to withdraw the defamation suit he filed against the AAP chief.
“The whole campaign of the party was centred on the drug issue and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots,” the Punjab source said.
“The party’s Delhi leadership did not bother to consult the Punjab leadership before offering an apology to Majithia and now this talk of alliance,” the source added, “Everyone here, from the local leadership to volunteers, is in a state of confusion.”
“We are gradually losing ground in Punjab. If the leadership in Delhi doesn’t realise this, we’ll be extinct by next polls,” said the source, also questioning the lack of efforts to pacify disgruntled party leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira.
“What was the point of Arvind Kejriwal coming to Punjab and not making any attempt to pacify Sukhpal Singh Khaira,” the source asked, referring to Kejriwal’s visit to the state last month.
The former leader of the opposition in Punjab, Khaira was removed from the post amid reports of his resistance to the Delhi unit’s “interference” in state affairs.
He reportedly also rubbed the Delhi brass the wrong way with remarks that seemed to favour a proposed referendum on Khalistan being spearheaded by Indians abroad. He has since mounted an open rebellion, with seven party MLAs siding with him.