(Prashant
Bhushan is a famous lawyer-activist whose public interest litigations
have helped expose major scams. He is a founding member of the Aam
Aadmi Party.)
Dear Arvind,
In the National Council meeting held on the
March 28, in your Convenor's address, instead of giving a review of
the party's situation and the path ahead, you chose to launch an
attack on Yogendra Ji, my father and me, making all sorts of false
and inflammatory allegations against us. Your speech incited several
Delhi MLAs- (who were invited despite not being members of the NC) to
scream that we were "gaddars" who should be thrown out, and
behave in the manner of hooligans. Such was the ferocity of the mob
of these MLAs and others as they rushed towards my father, that he
felt that he may not get out of this alive.
You did not even
allow us to respond to your allegations. Immediately after your
speech, in the middle of shouting and screaming by MLAs and others,
Manish read out a resolution for our removal (without any chair, and
without anyone allowing him to do so). He then proceeded to call for
vote by show of hands without allowing any discussion, forcing us to
walk out of what had clearly become a farce.
It was farcical for many reasons: Many members of the NC had not
been invited or allowed to attend; more than half the people inside
the meeting hall were non-members, which included MLAs, district and
State conveners of four states, volunteers and bouncers; there was no
orderly conduct of the proceedings for many reasons, including the
hooliganism displayed by many people there; no independent
videography was allowed, the party's Lokpal was not allowed,
etc.
What has happened subsequent to the 28th, however, has
taken the farce to a level where it seems as if a Stalinist purge is
taking place in the party. The party's internal Lokpal, a person of
immense stature and independence, has been removed
unconstitutionally, merely because he expressed his wish to attend
the National Council meeting and was seen to be fair; other members
of the National Executive are being suspended, again
unconstitutionally, only because they had attended a press conference
held by us after the hooliganism in the National Council
meeting.
Thereafter, you have ordered the release of a
carefully-edited version of your speech at the National Council
meeting, containing various false charges against us, and carefully
editing out the portions showing the hooliganism of the mob. It is in
such circumstances that I am having to write this open letter to
you.
In order to respond to your charges, I would need to go
back a bit to see where my serious differences started with you.
If you will remember, my differences started after the Lok Sabha
elections, when a series of things happened which began to show two
serious defects in your character and personality. Firstly, you
wanted to push through your decisions at any cost in the party,
despite the majority of the PAC or the National Executive disagreeing
with you. This included decisions that would have undoubtedly
been very harmful for the party and against public interest. And
secondly, you were willing to use some very highly unethical
and even criminal means to achieve your ends.
After the
Lok Sabha elections, you felt that the party was finished, and
could only be revived if it were able to form the government
again in Delhi. So immediately after the elections, you started
talking to the Congress party for taking its support again to
form the government in Delhi. When news of this came out, a large
number of important people in the party including Prithvi
Reddy, Mayank Gandhi and Anjali Damania called me up saying this
would be disastrous, and if this happens, they would have to quit the
party. I was in Shimla at that time, I called you up, and I said that
you should not go ahead with this unless there is a proper discussion
in the Political Action Committee (PAC).
I immediately
came back and we had a meeting of the PAC at your residence.
And at that meeting, a majority of the members - 5:4 - felt that we
should not go ahead with forming the government with Congress'
support. I had pointed out that this would seem extremely
opportunistic, since there was no logical reason for us to change our
publicly stated position. I also added that such a government would
not last, as the Congress will withdraw support soon, and thereafter,
for us to revive the party would become even more difficult.
Instead
of abiding by the majority decision, you said that while that may be
the majority view, as the Convenor of the party, you have the right
to take the final decision, and that you would go ahead with seeking
Congress' support. At that point, I had a verbal argument with you. I
said the party can't be run in this manner, and it has to be run by
some democratic means. So it was decided to refer this issue to the
National Executive which had many more people. This reference was
made by email, and people were expected to vote by next morning. By
next morning, again a majority of people opposed this decision in the
National Executive and yet, a letter was secretly sent by you to the
Lieutenant Governor of Delhi saying that he should not dissolve the
Assembly for another week because AAP wants to seek the opinion of
the people on whether to form the government again.
Immediately
after the letter came out, Congress said they were not ready to
support AAP and that left us with egg on our face with the result
that you had to backtrack the next day and apologize. But despite
that, the attempt to form the government with Congress' support or
with the support of breakaway MLAs from the Congress continued, as is
clear from the sting tape of Rajesh Garg which shows you were wanting
to form the government with the support of those MLAs whom you had
yourself accused of having being bought over by the BJP for Rs. 4
crore each. How could you even think of forming a government with the
support of such people! And this went on till as late as November,
just before the dissolution of the Assembly. In November, you called
Nikhil Dey and asked him to speak to Rahul Gandhi to convince him to
get the Congress party to support. But Nikhil told you that he can't
talk to Rahul Gandhi on this issue.
Can you deny any of these
facts? All this, showed your willingness to go against majority
opinion, break all democratic rules of the party, and seek unethical
support of MLAs whom you yourself had accused of being corrupt, all
in the pursuit of power at any cost.
Then came the issue of AVAM or Aam Aadmi Volunteer Action Manch,
which was a group of volunteers who wanted their voices heard in the
party. Because this was threatening to brew into a rebellion amongst
volunteers who felt that they were being used only like slave labour,
and because you felt that it was necessary to crush this, it appears
that the party got an SMS sent in the name of AVAM, saying that
volunteers should join the BJP - the idea was to suggest
that AVAM had become an agent of the BJP, though the SMS was
fabricated by the party itself in the name of AVAM. And using this,
you announced in a Google Hangout that these people had become
traitors because of that SMS. And on that basis, Karan Singh, who was
the leader of AVAM, was suspended and removed from the party. He
appealed to the national disciplinary committee, which I was heading,
and he said 'I had been saying that this is not sent by me, please
have this investigated'. So I asked you and Dilip Pandey and others
to get this investigated, but you steadfastly refused.
Eventually, Karan Singh had to lodge an FIR, and the police
investigated the matter and it was found that a volunteer of the
party, not of AVAM, called Deepak Chaudhary, created this identity in
the name of AAVAAM and used that to send that SMS. You should know
Arvind, that impersonating an organisation or persons in order to
defame them, is a serious criminal offence. Unfortunately young
volunteers in the party under your tutelage are being taught that use
of such means is OK in politics, since any means used to defeat a
"Bigger evil" is OK.
Then came the issue of
whether the party should contest Assembly elections in Haryana and
Maharashtra. Again the matter was put to the National Executive by
email, and the majority - 15 is to 4 - said that that should be left
to state units to decide in accordance with our principle of Swaraj.
But you did not allow that decision to be implemented. And
eventually, it was rendered infructuous, because elections came too
close and finally in that National Executive meet in Sangrur it was
decided that there's no point, and one should forget about contesting
those elections.
When the Delhi elections were announced and campaigning started,
you instructed volunteers to start a campaign 'Modi for PM, Kejriwal
for CM'. I said this is totally unprincipled. It means that our party
has gone down on its knees before Modi at a time when it was
positioning itself as the main opposition to Modi.
When the process of candidate selection for the Delhi Assembly
election of 2015 started, I found there was no transparency. Contrary
to earlier practice, we were not posting candidates' names on the
website. Even the PAC, which was meant to approve the candidate, was
not being sent the bio-data or names of the candidates in advance to
enable us to check the records of the candidates. In the second
meeting of the PAC to discuss candidate selection, because I had
received complaints about two of the candidates who were being
proposed in that meeting, I pointed this out. You got very angry
saying, "Why do you think we will be selecting crooked people?"
I said that is not the point - we need to have some transparency and
due diligence. That led to an argument between you and me, and I
walked out of that meeting and wrote an email on November 27, that I
cannot be a rubber stamp for non-transparent and questionable
selection of candidates. That email is now in the public domain.
After that, in the next list, again there were at least four
questionable candidates among the 10 names proposed. Yogendra Yadav
and I wrote a letter to the PAC on 10th December, detailing the
objections against these four and pointing out that this time, the
process of candidate selection was very different from the last time.
This time, we were giving tickets to a large number of political
entrepreneurs who had joined the party only for opportunism, who had
jumped ship from Congress, BJP or BSP at the last moment,
who had no ideological commitment to our party, had no record of
public service, and whose sources of wealth weren't explained.
Some of them were people against whom our party had itself
complained that they were distributing money or liquor or had beaten
up our volunteers. One of them (our initial choice from Wazirpur),
went back to the BJP within 4 hours of us announcing his candidature.
Your initial choice for the Mehrauli seat, Gandas, had to be dropped
at the last moment only because his photographs were circulated with
him showing off, with a glass of liquor in one hand and a revolver in
the other. Yet, while he was dropped, his brother was given the
ticket. Eventually, even he had to be changed because our Lokpal,
Admiral Ramdas gave a strong report against him.
Thereafter,
AAP stopped having meetings of the PAC or sending names for the
approval of the PAC, and started announcing names on their own. When
all this happened, I said "Now enough is enough. If this does
not stop, and if there is no credible scrutiny of these candidates, I
will have to resign from the party and make public the reasons for my
resignation." On that, an emergency meeting was called at my
residence on January 4, by Yogendra Yadav, Prithvi Reddy etc which
had 16-17 people from all over the country, important functionaries
of the party. All of them felt that the party's campaign would be
ruined if I resigned at that stage.
In that meeting I
said, "Look, all these kinds of compromises are being made,
various ethical corners are being cut and now you are selecting these
kind of candidates without proper transparency or scrutiny. If you go
with these kinds of candidates, then even if you win, the further
compromises that you will have to make, will be such that they will
completely destroy the USP of the party, which is of being a clean,
transparent party, wedded to alternative politics. And instead of
winning by using these kinds of candidates, it would be better to
lose the elections by going with clean and honourable candidates".
That statement is being twisted around to claim that I said that I
wanted the party to lose.
I had said that rather than winning by these kinds of candidates
and means, it's better to go with honourable candidates and run the
risk of a possible loss. Because winning with these kinds of
candidates and means destroys the founding principles of the party in
the short run, and will destroy the party itself in the long run.
If I had wanted the party to lose the elections, I would have
resigned and gone public with my reasons at that very time. If
Yogendra Yadav wanted the party to lose, he would not have convened
that meeting and stopped me from going public. Instead, he worked his
heart out for this campaign, defended the party on innumerable
occasions on TV. And yet you have the temerity to accuse even him,
along with me, of working for the defeat of the party!
At the end of that meeting, an arrangement was worked out with
your express consent, that: We would immediately refer all the
complaints against candidates who had been selected to the Lokpal of
the party and his decision would be final. And the rest of the issues
of institutional reforms about transparency in the party,
accountability, swaraj, inner party democracy - those issues will be
taken up immediately after the elections. So those complaints against
12 candidates were referred to the Lokpal. In the 4 days that he had
to do this exercise, he recommended the removal of two against
whom there was clear evidence, recommended the issuance of warnings
against six against whom there was some evidence, and allowed four to
continue. Two were thus removed.
But the other issue of
institutional reforms, which was agreed to be taken up within two
days of the election results, were not discussed. Instead, the
National Executive meeting of February 26, which you chose not to
attend, started with Vishwas announcing your resignation and a no
holds barred attack on Yogendra Yadav and myself by members of your
coterie. The message conveyed by them on your behalf was clear: That
the price for your continuing as Convenor was our removal from the
PAC and NE. I then responded and pointed out the things I have
mentioned above, and the issues of institutional reforms, but those
were not discussed. The only issue that was discussed that day was
whether you should continue as Convenor.
We all agreed that you should continue, but thereafter, some
people went to your residence to meet you, and you made it clear that
it's either you or us, and that we have to be removed. And therefore,
that is what happened in the next meeting which was held on March 4.
A charge that is made against me is that I did not campaign for
the party during this election. I had said that I can't campaign for
many of these candidates, and given the manner in which these
candidates had been selected, I was willing to campaign only for
those candidates about whom I was fairly certain that they were the
kind of people who would take the ideology of clean politics forward
and work in public interest if they win. I had in fact given a list
of five people that I thought were decent. But the party did not send
me any programme for addressing public meetings. I therefore went for
Pankaj Pushkar's public meetings who had personally invited me.
The other charge made against me is that I stopped people from
donating to AAP. When other people asked me whether they should
donate etc, I'd said, "Look, you should donate to those
candidates who appear to be decent and honest to you". You and
your coterie have made the same charge against my sister Shalini
Gupta. She also said the same thing that I had said to a closed
circle of friends. In fact she strenuously encouraged the Global
group to donate to deserving candidates, which is why several
candidates got so much funds from NRIs.
Your coterie have also accused my father, my sister and myself of
trying to capture the party. Arvind, you know very well that none of
us have even wanted any executive positions or tickets for ourselves
or any friends or family members. We have only tried to contribute
and help in every way that we could to see the party grow into a
powerful and credible vehicle for alternative politics in the
country. My father, apart from donating more than 2 crores as seed
money to the party, has spent an enormous amount of time in giving
selfless advice, legal and otherwise to the party. He played a major
role in the draft of the Jan Lokpal bill. He worked for the well
being of the party with his "tan, man and dhan". Yes, when
he felt that you, for various reasons were not the right person to
lead the party organisation, he frankly told you so. Apart from the
reasons of ethical compromises mentioned above, he also saw that you
were violating the constitution and rules of the party repeatedly,
not allowing any working structure of the party organisation to be
created (other than a coterie), and were not interested in
formulating the policies of the party.
For two years, the
elaborate reports of the 34 policy committees that we had set up,
have been gathering dust because you havent found the time or have
the inclination to look at those reports and apply your mind to them.
You accuse my father of having stated that you were his third choice
for CM after Kiran Bedi and Ajay Maken. That was his honest view
after seeing all the shorcomings in your character that he had been
observing. I had immediately publicly disagreed with his opinion, but
in the light of what has transpired subsequently, particularly the
stage managed lumpenism that you got unleashed in the NC meeting, I
regretfully wonder if he was right.
My sister Shalini Gupta,
as well as many other highly qualified persons, left their lucrative
jobs abroad to help you build credible and efficient systems which
would have proper cells and expertise so that it could function as a
world class organisation. On repeated occasions you had yourself
asked Shalini to give up her job for the sake of the country and said
that her role as Organization Development Advisor was only an
advisory role and not a formal position with any power in the party
as discussed in the PAC before she was appointed. However it
became clear over time that you did not want any professional advice
in this matter. Instead you asked Ashutosh who has no such
professional expertise to come up with an alternative plan to make
each cell of the party organisation an appendage to your coterie and
accountable only to you.
It is true Arvind that I have not
contributed as much as you for the party. I have not fasted, nor gone
to jail. I have been mostly involved in my various PILs against
various scams, 2G, Coalgate, the CBI director, 4G, the Reliance Gas
robbery, against GM foods, Nuclear Power Plants, destructive Hydel
projects, Section 66A, Tobacco and Gutka, etc. I have spent the rest
of my time giving legal and other advice to the party and fighting
its cases in court. I have never been interested in any executive
posts and I have seen my role in the party mainly as a person who
will try and ensure that it remains true to its founding principles.
And it is for this reason that I have raised my voice whenever I have
found it to be slipping from its path.
Arvind, this party was
founded with a lot of idealism by thousands of people, especially
young people, who came out and spent a lot of their time, effort,
energy, money, sweat and blood in order to create a vehicle for
alternative politics, in order to create a party that would practice
clean and transparent politics. But unfortunately, all those
principles are being betrayed by you and your coterie, who are
currently in control of the party. And it has become a
supremo-oriented, high-command culture kind of party.
You feel
that you can rectify everything by running the Delhi government well
in the 5 years that you have. You think that if you deliver on
governance, people will forget what you have done to the party. I
wish you well in that endeavour. Even traditional political parties
like Congress, BJP have done some governance. But the dream
that we started with for clean and principled politics and corruption
free governance was much much bigger. The fear that I have, is
that after how you have behaved and the character traits that you
have showed, this dream of clean and principled politics that the Aam
Aadmi party was founded on may well turn into a nightmare. But still,
I wish you well.
Goodbye and good luck,
Prashant
, is a direction of the Shastras. The Mandal therefore knows from whom a