Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan hint at forming another party

NEW DELHI: Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, the two senior AAP rebel members who have been expelled from the party's national executive, have hinted that they might be floating another political party.

As a step towards testing the political waters, the duo will hold a national consultation of their supporters on April 14, B R Ambedkar's birthday. The meeting will include AAP members who are close to the rebels and people from other civil society movements. Former AAP internal Lokpal Admiral L Ramdas and Narmada Bachao Andolan's Medha Patkar will also be invited.

That the rebel duo was toying with the idea of forming another political formation was apparent when Bhushan said that a legally battle for the title of AAP was "distasteful" to him, while Yadav said this course of action was not worth their time. Facing ouster from AAP, Yadav said he would not go back to academics; instead he will continue to be in politics.

Bhushan said, "We have three options. We can approach the Election Commission or courts, to retrieve the party from Kejriwal and his coterie. This is something that I find personally distasteful. The second option is to start something new politically which carries forward the objectives and founding principles that we had in mind when AAP was created and the third is to not get involved in a political party but start a people's movement taking up issues of land rights and many other things. The objective is to channelize the positive energy that idealistic volunteers and members have in a positive direction to ensure systemic changes." He said a decision would be taken after consulting people from all walks of life.

On their future course of action, Yadav said, "My opinion is that the spirit of the AAP movement has to be kept alive. We must march forward. We must not allow these incidents and negativity to affect us. We should move forward. The way to move forward would be to generate energy in the country."

Anticipating his and Bhushan's expulsion from the party, Yadav said the AAP leadership would not relent till they had thrown them out of the party and both of them were ready for it. "Going by what we have witnessed in the last one month, this is the most natural consequence. I initially thought sidelining us was enough for them. Then I thought they just want to throw us from Political Affairs Committee, then it is the National Executive and my own sense is that this whole farce is being played out in the true spirit of Stalinist purges and it would stop only with our expulsion from the party," he said.


On Monday, national executive member and Bhushan-Yadav sympathizer Rakesh Sinha expressed his surprise at being kept in the dark over the NE meeting a day earlier. Saying a lot of decisions had been taken in a hurry, Sinha said, "The issue I feel most uneasy about is the treatment given to our outgoing Lokpal. While appointment of new Lokpal was indeed due, I wonder if our outgoing Lokpal was given adequate opportunity to name his successor as envisaged in our rules."

Meanwhile, there was considerable tension in state units. The Punjab unit is already divided with parliamentary committee chief Dharamvira Gandhi, who is MP form Patiala, throwing his lot with the rebel duo. Maharashtra functionary Maruti Bhapkar expressed his "disgust" over the happenings in the party, "Whatever happened in NC meeting was nothing short of murder of democracy. I am deeply hurt and giving serious thought to quitting the party."