A digital poster by the Aam Aadmi Party that appears to portray several Congress leaders as corrupt has prompted the Grand Old Party to approach the Election Commission seeking a takedown order.
The poster, shared by the AAP on its X handle, includes photos of the leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Congress treasurer Ajay Maken, and the party’s New Delhi Assembly candidate Sandeep Dikshit along with those of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath and a few other BJP leaders.
They are placed below a photo of AAP national convener and New Delhi candidate Arvind Kejriwal, with a caption in Hindi that says: “Kejriwal’s honesty will prevail over all those (who are) corrupt.”
A delegation of the Delhi Congress’s legal and human rights department, headed by advocate Sunil Kumar, submitted a complaint against Kejriwal to the poll panel on Saturday evening and asked that the AAP be directed to take the poster down.
The poster comes less than a fortnight after Rahul’s first election rally in Delhi, where he likened Kejriwal to Modi on their perceived silence on a greater role for the backward classes and minorities, and their purported proximity to industrialists.
Kejriwal had then responded with a tweet, saying: “Today Rahul Gandhi came to Delhi. He abused me a lot. But I will not comment on his statements. His fight is to save Congress, my fight is to save the country.”
This uneasy détente was broken after the Congress’s reaction — or lack of it — to an “attack” on Kejriwal by his BJP opponent Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma’s supporters on January 18, according to the AAP’s chief spokesperson, Priyanka Kakkar.
“When Parvesh Verma orchestrated an attack on Arvind Kejriwal… the Congress remained silent,” she told The Telegraph.
She added: “Is the Congress’s silence on the BJP bribing voters not dishonesty?... They are silent on the wrong acts of the BJP as they have taken money from the BJP to contest the Delhi elections. The Congress should openly declare its unholy alliance with the BJP.”
After a group of men threw projectiles at Kejriwal’s car during the campaign, Delhi Congress chief Devender Yadav had condemned the BJP and the AAP for violence.
Yadav has now responded to the AAP poster, saying: “Kejriwal defamed the late (chief minister) Sheila Dikshit and her cabinet in the same way. He is steeped in corruption and has spent time in jail with his ministers…. The people of Delhi and India know you too well now.”
The INDIA bloc, led by the Congress, had held a rally in Delhi against Kejriwal’s arrest in the liquor policy case last year.
“BJP and AAP are two sides of the same coin,” Congress communications head Jairam Ramesh said on Saturday.
“There is no difference between them. We are fighting the elections against AAP and BJP. AAP is the B team of the BJP. There is a collusion between AAP and BJP.... Who started the Anna Hazare movement? From where did they get inspiration from? RSS was behind this.”
Ramesh reaffirmed that the INDIA bloc had been formed only for the Lok Sabha polls and had no bearing on the Delhi Assembly polls.
Alka Lamba, Congress candidate from Kalkaji who is contesting against chief minister Atishi, dared the AAP to quit the INDIA bloc. “If Arvind Kejriwal has the guts, he should announce that he is leaving the INDIA alliance,” she said.
“The Congress party is standing strong with 100 MPs and Arvind Kejriwal is the one who gave all the seven (Lok Sabha) seats (in Delhi) to the BJP.”
In a video message on Friday, Rahul had said: “Delhi now wants the same real development model of Sheila Dikshitji, not the false propaganda and PR model of BJP and Kejriwal.”
- Delhi votes on February 5