The BJP leadership on Thursday asked its Bihar MP Kirti Azad to exercise restraint in his campaign against alleged irregularities in the DDCA, an issue that the AAP has picked up to target finance minister Arun Jaitley.
The AAP’s attack on Jaitley came within days of a CBI raid at the Delhi secretariat over charges of corruption against chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s principal secretary. “The BJP’s organisational secretary Ram Lal had a meeting with Azad this afternoon. He has advised the MP to avoid doing anything that creates embarrassment for the party,” a BJP source said.
While Azad has been making allegations against the DDCA for quite some time, the party had ignored the former cricketer’s actions as they did not affect the organisation, said sources.
The party leadership is, however, not inclined to give him a free rein as the AAP is using the DDCA to target a senior leader and a party MP cannot be seen as helping the AAP in spreading “false propaganda”, BJP insiders said.
Sources believe Azad’s grudge against the DDCA may be attributed to his bitter past experience with Indian cricket and the Delhi association. Azad was national selector from the north zone between September 2003 and 2004, but was replaced by Yashpal Sharma when certain BCCI members complained about him.
{{/usCountry}}Sources believe Azad’s grudge against the DDCA may be attributed to his bitter past experience with Indian cricket and the Delhi association. Azad was national selector from the north zone between September 2003 and 2004, but was replaced by Yashpal Sharma when certain BCCI members complained about him.
{{/usCountry}}Azad was then made the chief of the selection committee for Delhi’s under-22 team and raised many eyebrows by changing the team for every match to include new players.