Kumar Vishwas gears up for Rajasthan polls

Kumar Vishwas will hold a meeting with party observers for Rajasthan on June 19 and visit the state on June 25.

Notwithstanding the rifts in the party, AAP’s Rajasthan in-charge Kumar Vishwas is gearing up for the state Assembly polls scheduled next year.

File photo of AAP leader Kumar Vishwas.(PTI Photo)

He will hold a meeting with party observers for Rajasthan on June 19 and visit the desert state on June 25.

The development comes a day after newly-appointed AAP treasurer Deepak Bajpai took a dig at the poet-turned-politician claiming that Vishwas had “stayed in a beach-view five star hotel in Goa” during the state polls there.

AAP spokesperson Dilip Pandey had also questioned Vishwas for attacking the Rajasthan Congress but remaining silent on chief minister Vasundhara Raje of BJP.

“We will take along the volunteers of the anti-graft movement which gave birth to the party, and contest the Rajasthan polls,” a party leader close to Vishwas said, indicating that his team may not have AAP leaders from Delhi.

Vishwas has been meeting volunteers as well as people from Rajasthan. He also met farmer leader Rampal Jat today to get acquainted with the issues related to agriculture.

In a meeting held with party volunteers last week, the senior AAP leader had asked them to go “back to basics”, indicating that the party had “strayed” from its core philosophy while contesting elections in Punjab and Goa, where it fared badly.

Vishwas had been at odds with the party’s central leadership for sometime now.

The differences had come to the fore when Vishwas refused to toe the party’s official line that “manipulation” of electronic voting machines was the prime reason behind its recent string of electoral defeats.

AAP’s Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan had dubbed Vishwas an “RSS-BJP agent” and accused him of “plotting a coup in AAP”, following which Vishwas had threatened to quit the party if no action was taken against the former. The party’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC) later suspended Khan.