Prashant Bhushan calls Arvind Kejriwal hypocrite

New Delhi, July 17: Former AAP leader and lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Friday called Arvind Kejriwal a "hypocrite and shameless" after the Delhi chief minister said he would be happy to have Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav back in the party.

Reacting strongly to Kejriwal's statement, Bhushan tweeted: "After abusing 'Sale, Kamine' and orchestrating a physical attack by his MLAs in the NC meeting, Kejriwal wants us back! Hypocrite Shameless!"

Kejriwal told a television channel on Friday: "If Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan come back, it will be good."

Reacting to Kejriwal's claim that Delhi's former law minister Jitendra Singh Tomar had kept him in dark on his fake degree issue, Bhushan called Kejriwal a "liar".

"After HC issued notice on Tomar's fake degrees on February 4, and both universities had declared them fake, Kejriwal says he didn't know! Liar!"

Yogendra Yadav, who was ousted from the AAP along with Bhushan, said he never left the path of honest politics, but Kejriwal deviated from the principles of the party.

He tweeted: "Heard @ArvindKejriwal would be happy to have us back! But we never left the path of honest politics. He did. Does he want to come back?"

Reacting to Bhushan and Yadav's comments, AAP's media coordinator Deepak Bajpai said both the expelled leaders were in the habit of abusing the party leaders.

Bajpai said he would suggest to Bhushan and Yadav to do that something positive which they always talked about.

"We wish them luck and request them to do something positive also instead of abusing AAP leaders all the time," Bajpai said.

Both Yadav and Bhushan were expelled from the AAP in April for alleged anti-party activities following an acrimonious two-month-long war of words between the founding members of the party and Kejriwal backers.

Since then, Yadav and Bhushan have publicly accused Kejriwal of being intolerant of dissenting voices.

The two later launched a "Swaraj Abhiyaan" campaign to force the AAP to return to what they say were its foundational ideals.

IANS