Gujarat government, BJP threatened traders to cancel meet: Arvind Kejriwal

Panaji, June 30: The Gujarat government and the BJP threatened members of a traders body in Surat into cancelling a July 10 meeting to which Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had been invited as they are nervous about the AAP, Kejriwal said on Thursday.

"The businessmen say they are getting calls from Gandhinagar, saying if Kejriwal is called, then they will be destroyed. So due to pressure by the Gujarat government, all these meetings are being cancelled," the Aam Aadmi Party leader said during an interaction with editors here.

"It clearly demonstrates the nervousness of the Gujarat BJP and the Gujarat government," he added.

Kejriwal said that one Jailal from the Surat Vehapari Mahamandal had formally invited him to attend a meeting in the city because of the support the AAP had given in the past to protestors demanding a rollback of the one percent excise imposition on jewellers.

"Their head Jailal had come to invite me in Delhi at my home. They gave me a formal invitation. I accepted that. The meeting was supposed to take place on July 10. Suddenly, I am told that the venue, which was some university, suddenly the university cancelled the booking on its campus.

"Suddenly, we realised that Jailal wrote them a letter that they were not organising the programme," Kejriwal said, adding that subsequent sting operations on Wednesday had shown the Registrar of the University saying that if Kejriwal was being invited, the booking would be disallowed.

IANS