After being on the run for nearly one and a half months, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA and tribal leader Chaitar Vasava surrendered before the police on Friday in Dediapada town in Gujarat’s Narmada district.
Vasava is facing charges for allegedly threatening forest department personnel and firing one round in the air, an official said. The incident took place on October 30 and the case was registered on November 2.
Upon surrendering, Vasava was formally arrested, joined by three other accused individuals, said Ghanshyam Sarvaiya, deputy superintendent of police (DSP), Narmada.
“The BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] government is trying to silence Vasava, a true leader and a real hero in the Adivasi community. They want him to leave AAP and join the BJP, but Vasava is firm. He will not give in and he plans to run in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from the Bharuch constituency. The entire AAP party stands firmly in support of Vasava,” said Jayesh Sangada, state secretary and spokesperson for AAP Gujarat.
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{{/usCountry}}Vasava represents the Dediapada (ST) assembly constituency and also serves as the leader of AAP’s legislature party in Gujarat. The tribal leader is also the working president of the party’s central Gujarat unit.
Vasava’s arrest came a day after AAP MLA Bhupendra Bhayani, one of the party’s five MLAs in Gujarat, resigned on Wednesday citing “a lack of the right platform” and declared his intention to join the BJP shortly.
“I believe in nationalism-oriented politics. While in AAP, I was not able to serve my constituency,” he said.
This has dealt a blow to the party ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha to be held in Gujarat in April-May 2024.
In September, Arjun Rathva, another tribal leader and AAP state vice president, joined the Congress after an unsuccessful assembly election where he secured over 45,000 votes.
Additionally, Vashram Sagathiya, expelled as the AAP vice-president of Gujarat, had joined the Congress on June 21, admitting his earlier move to AAP as a “big mistake.”
The party had lost two more Surat municipal councillors to the ruling BJP, taking the total number of councillors to have exited AAP over the past two years to about a dozen.
The AAP, which made an impressive entry in Gujarat elections in 2021 by replacing Congress as the main opposition party in Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) with 27 councillors, is reduced to 15.
In February last year, six AAP councillors joined the BJP, however, two of them returned to the fold. Earlier this month, six AAP councillors left the party and joined the BJP. Corporators Kanu Gedia and Alpesh Patel joined the BJP at a function in April.
Two corporators were removed for anti-party activities because they were instigating others to join the BJP by promising them money, said an AAP leader. The BJP has rubbished these claims and said Gedia and Patel had joined of their own accord and were not pressurised or offered allurement.
Gedia told media persons in April that the victory in Surat civic polls was due to the personal efforts of the corporators and that AAP workers were agitated after the dismal performance in Gujarat state assembly elections held in December 2022.
The AAP had emerged as the primary opposition party after winning 27 seats in the 120-member Surat Municipal Corporation elections in February 2021 where the party managed to secure a 28% vote share. The BJP won 93 seats, while the Congress failed to win a single seat.