The excessive display of paranoia by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), right from its top leadership to the lowest cadres, has assumed ludicrous proportions and indicates the complete demoralization in the party in the face of imminent defeat in the recently concluded assembly elections, Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh said on Tuesday.With AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal leading the way, every Tom, Dick and Harry in the party is running to the Election Commission (EC) with one or the other frivolous complaint, clear indicating that the party is preparing ground to save face following the declaration of the results, said the Congress chief ministerial candidate, in a hard-hitting statement issued here.Captain Amarinder demanded that, as in the case of the judiciary, there should be some provision in the EC rules to penalize political parties and candidates found indulging in unsubstantiated complaints and petitions, and engaging the EC in cheap gimmickry to further their vested interests.
The Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president also lambasted Kejriwal and his party for dragging the EC, which all serious political parties look up to as being a neutral and non-partisan democratic institution, into an ugly quagmire of allegations and counter-allegations. This is not a healthy sign and reflects on the immaturity, and worse still, on the despicable thinking and lack of ideology in AAP, said Captain Amarinder.The Congress, being the main opposition party in Punjab and dubbed by majority of the opinion polls to be the leading player in the polls, had much more at stake than AAP in these elections, Captain Amarinder pointed. Yet, the Congress was not raising such ruckus on the security of EVMs as was being done by AAP, he observed, adding that the entire drama was evidently being enacted by Kejriwal and his cronies to justify their eventual electoral defeat, which would be officially declared just about three weeks from now.
The uproar triggered by AAP over the removal of some old EVMs in Patiala was the latest piece of theatrics staged by Kejriwal’s party to pave the ground for raising suspicions about the accuracy of the EVMs and the bona fide of the results, when they are announced on March 11, said Captain Amarinder. He pointed out that just a few days ago the AAP Patiala candidate Dr. Balbir Singh had made a nuisance of himself, and tried to corner the EC with his injudicious and senseless demand for permission to set up his own CCTV at a counting centre.AAP candidates and other party workers are obviously taking a cue from Kejriwal, who himself had been running to the EC on the slightest of pretexts and had even earned the wrath of the poll body over his bribe remarks in Goa, Captain Amarinder said, adding that the depth of frustration in AAP showed that they had seen the writing on the wall but were unwilling to acknowledge it.The Punjab Congress chief urged Kejriwal to accept his party’s defeat gracefully and not lower the dignity of prestigious institutions like the EC to cover up his own desperation.