Prashant Bhushan writes open letter to Kejriwal

New Delhi, Apr 4: Days after he and Yogendra Yadav were expelled from the party's top decision-making fora, rebel AAP leader Prashant Bhushan today fired a fresh salvo at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal accusing him of turning AAP a "high command-oriented" party and betraying trust of lakhs of supporters.

In an open letter to Kejriwal, Bhushan said, "God and history will not forgive what you are doing to the party," Bhushan and Yadav were expelled from AAP's National Executive on March 28 for "anti-party activities".

"After winning the Delhi elections with such a thumping majority, when you have such good fortune, you should be showing your best qualities to the people of this country. But unfortunately, your worst qualities have emerged now," Bhushan said.

"The removal of the Lokpal, us and others who questioned the manner of our removal, reminds one of Stalin's purge of dissenters in the Communist party of Russia. You should read Orwell's Animal Farm to see the parallels between Stalin's Russia and what is happening in our party today. God and history will not forgive what you are doing to the party," Bhushan said.

The party founded with a dream of "clean and principled" politics may well turn into a "nightmare", he said. Bhushan also said it would be wrong on Kejriwal's party to think that people will forget about the "betrayal" if he delivered on good governance.

"Even traditional political parties like Congress, BJP have done some governance. But the dream that we started with for clean and principled politics and corruption-free governance was much much bigger," he said.

Bhushan said, "the fear that I have, is that after how you have behaved and the character traits that you have showed, this dream of clean and principled politics that the Aam Aadmi party was founded on may well turn into a nightmare".

PTI