Former AAP leader Kumar Vishwas's security to be reviewed: Govt sources

Kumar Vishwas had claimed that AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal was ready to take support from the fringe and separatist elements to become the chief minister of Punjab.

Published on: Feb 18, 2022, 11:43:48 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The security of poet and former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Kumar Vishwas is being reviewed after he courted controversy by levelling damaging allegations against Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, according to people familiar with the matter. Kumar Vishwas had claimed that AAP national convener was ready to take support from the fringe and separatist elements to become the chief minister of Punjab.

Poet and AAP founding member Kumar Vishwas. (PTI Photo)

Vishwas, a founding member of AAP, went on to say that Kejriwal also had his “formula” ready to become the first Prime Minister of an “independent nation”.

"One day, he (Kejriwal) told me he would either become the chief minister (of Punjab)...or the first prime minister of an independent nation (Khalistan)," Kumar Vishwas said in an interview.

Sikh separatist elements have long been demanding a separate nation by seceding from Punjab, which directly threatens India's integrity and sovereignty. Vishwas's allegation has not only the ability to damage AAP's prospects in the Punjab assembly elections scheduled for February 20, it could also have a long-lasting impact on Kejriwal's carefully built image over a period of time.

The Aam Aadmi Party has vehemently denied the allegations and demanded proof from Vishwas to substantiate his claims.

Both Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have cornered AAP over Vishwas's allegations. Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi even requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order an “impartial probe” into the video interview of Vishwas, on which the additional chief electoral officer of Punjab had briefly put a publishing ban through a controversial letter.

On Thursday, the election official restrained media houses, political parties and their representatives from publishing the interview, terming it “maliciously manufactured”. The letter was soon withdrawn by the chief electoral officer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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