The BJP, for the third day in a row on Monday, sought to paint the Aam Aadmi Party and its chief Arvind Kejriwal as corrupt, betraying a desperation to malign the party that is seeking to spread its wings in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state Gujarat.

The BJP has held multiple media conferences since the CBI lodged a case and raided the residence of Delhi deputy chief minister and AAP’s second in command Manish Sisodia in the alleged excise policy scam. At the media interactions, BJP leaders have been repeatedly referring to Kejriwal as the “mastermind” and a “kattar beiman” (staunch dishonest) leader.

“Arvind Kejriwal’s corruption has been caught and instead of answering the questions posed by the people of Delhi, he is changing goal posts,” BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said.

The AAP has been an irritant for the BJP for long. Despite ruling the country from Delhi, the BJP is out of power in the capital.

The Congress had ruled the state for three straight terms since 1998 followed by the AAP, which is now in its second term.

In the last Delhi polls in 2020, the BJP won just eight seats out of 70 despite a massive push by all its top leaders.

The AAP’s expansion efforts that come in the wake of it securing power in Punjab early this year have raised the BJP’s hackles. The state on top of the AAP’s target is Gujarat, the home state of Modi and home minister Amit Shah, which goes to the polls at the end of this year.

“Kejriwal has been drawing good crowds in Gujarat. His promise for freebies like electricity has excited a section of the voters,” a BJP MP from Gujarat said.

The MP said that even if the AAP failed to win Gujarat, it might emerge as a challenger to the BJP in a state known as the laboratory of the Modi-Shah brand of politics.

Modi too had betrayed jitters when he recently termed the culture of freebies in exchange of votes as “dangerous for the country”. The fact that Modi was indirectly targeting Kejriwal was clear since the AAP in Delhi had been repeatedly accused by the BJP of misleading the voters with freebies like free electricity and water. The BJP has also rolled out a social media campaign portraying Kejriwal using “rewri” (a common and cheap sweet in north India) to loot the people.

The timing of lodging corruption cases against Sisodia also lends credence to allegations of the BJP worried about the AAP’s foray in Gujarat.

BJP leaders pointed out how the current lieutenant governor of Delhi, V.K. Saxena, who ordered the CBI probe in the excise policy case, also hailed from Gujarat. Saxena had fought legal battles against now-jailed social activist Teesta Setalvad in defence of Modi, the then Gujarat chief minister.

BJP insiders said the AAP had been a difficult opponent unlike other Opposition parties.

“We can easily paint the Congress and many other Opposition parties not only as corrupt but also dynastic and anti-nationalists, resorting to appeasement politics. The AAP, however, has positioned itself as equally nationalist and Hindu like us,” a BJP leader said, pointing out how the corruption stick was the only weapon left against the party.

The Kejriwal-led party had used the alleged corruption cases against the previous Congress government to secure power in Delhi, and now the BJP wanted to establish that the AAP was “as corrupt as the Congress”.

“People of Delhi had reposed faith in Kejriwal as they were fed up with Congress’s corruption. Today the same people are repenting after seeing the corrupt side of Kejriwal,” Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri told reporters, alleging that Kejriwal and his AAP had made crores by bringing the new excise policy in violation of rules.