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Kejriwal attacks Congress, BJP in Rajasthan rally
AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday alleged that both the Congress and the BJP have looted Rajasthan and fooled its people for years.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday alleged that both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have looted Rajasthan and fooled its people for years.
Kejriwal, along with party colleague and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann, led the AAP’s “Tiranga Yatra” from Sanganeri Gate to Ajmeri Gate in Jaipur.
Attacking the BJP and Congress in Rajasthan, which will go to assembly elections later this year, Kejriwal dubbed the two national parties as siblings. “The BJP and Congress are like brother and sister… Everyone knows about the friendship between them. They have looted the state and fooled the people,” Kejriwal said while addressing a gathering after the rally.
Claiming that Congress leader and Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and his predecessor and senior BJP leader Vasundhara Raje were friends who came to each other’s aide from time to time, Kejriwal urged people to give his party a chance for the sake of development in the assembly polls.
“I have heard Raje and Gehlot are good friends. If anything happens to Gehlot, Raje gets the BJP in his support. When there was talk that the BJP might remove Raje, Gehlot stood in her support,” claimed Kejriwal. “They belong to the same party — the Vasundhara Raje-Ashok Gehlot party.”
Kejriwal also raked up the recent arrest of former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, saying he was put behind bars for trying to “provide good education” to the poor.
“The BJP sent Sisodia to jail because he was improving schools in Delhi and providing quality education to children of poor families. The BJP could not tolerate that and sent him to jail,” he alleged.
To be sure, Sisodia was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on February 26 in connection with the alleged corruption in the formulation and implementation of the Delhi excise policy. He was subsequently arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on March 9 on money laundering charges in excise policy case.
Kejriwal also took a dig at the BJP’s double engine government (a BJP government at both the Centre and in the state) slogan. “In Karnataka when the Congress was in power, there was 20% commission. When the BJP came to power, it became 40% commission. When the BJP says double engine, you must understand they mean double commission,” alleged Kejriwal.
He urged people to vote for his party if they want “schools, hospitals, roads and electricity.”
Bhagwant Mann urged the people to vote out the Congress and the BJP from Rajasthan.
“This is not my fight or Sisodia’s or Kejriwal’s, this is your fight. You have to use the broom to clean out all the filth,” Mann said, adding that the BJP and Congress only fight for power and are not interested in development.
Hitting back at the AAP leaders, the state BJP said Kejriwal is the chief minister of Delhi where six ministers are either in jail of have resigned over various charges. “The country is seeing how Kejriwal is destroying Delhi and Punjab,” said BJP spokesperson Laxmikant Bhardwaj. “The people of Rajasthan will not fall for the ploys of such an anarchist element.”
The state Congress also attacked Kejriwal, alleging his party has served liquor instead of education in Delhi, referring to the excise policy case. “Their words and action do not match,” said Congress spokesperson RC Choudhary. “They talk of development and law and order, but in Punjab, the country has seen how they are allowing the Khalistanis to rule the roost.”
