Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh has said Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has lost all moral right to contest the upcoming Assembly elections in Punjab after the latest revelations of corruption in the party.Coming on the heels of a series of corruption and sex scandals that have been rocked the party in recent weeks, the allegations made by Vinod Kumar against party leaders Sanjay Singh and Durgesh Pathak have completely nailed Kejriwal’s lies about `zero tolerance’ in the party against corruption, the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president said.Kejriwal had shown his true colours, with these charges thoroughly exposing the moral degradation and lack of ethics in the party, whose leadership was only interested in exploiting the state elections to make money, said Captain Amarinder.Tickets were evidently on sale in AAP, as evidenced by Vinod’s allegations, said Captain Amarinder, adding that there had been reports even earlier of women ticket aspirants being sexually exploited in exchange of promises of tickets by several AAP leaders in Punjab.
Far from showing concern for the welfare of the people of Punjab, as was evident from Kejriwal’s continued silence on SYL, AAP and its leadership was busy exploiting the state elections to make money by putting tickets on sale, the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president said.The corruption charges raised by AAP’s Vinod Kumar showed why Kejriwal had chosen this particular time to run away from Punjab, leaving his scheduled rallies mid way, Captain Amarinder said. Coupled with the poor response his rallies have been receiving in the state, such serious charges are enough to show that Kejriwal is misusing his political authority and his party status to promote his personal and political interests, without an iota of concern for the welfare of the people, said the Punjab Congress president.Meanwhile, the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) has asked Kejriwal to first name the chief ministerial candidate for his party in Punjab before talking about the deputy chief minister.
In any case, they asked, how many deputy chief ministers does Kejriwal plan to announce before the elections. He has already announced some other names for the post, they pointed out.Taking a dig at Kejriwal’s promise of a Dalit deputy chief minister, which he made while finally releasing his party’s Dalit manifesto after several postponements, PPCC leaders Rajinder Berry, Mohinder Singh Kaypee and Avtar Henry said the manifesto itself showed how intellectually bereft Kejriwal was, since a large number of the promises made were based on announcements already made by Captain Amarinder.“These gimmicks of yours are not going to help you,” the PPCC leader said, referring to the Dalit Deputy CM remark of Kejriwal, which they said was clearly a ploy to win over the community before the Assembly elections, where AAP seemed destined to be wiped out without a fight.