In April 2023, exactly one year ahead of the 2024 General Elections, when the Central Bureau of Investigation issued notice to Aam Aadmi Party supremo and then Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in the alleged excise scam, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge specially called him to express his solidarity, accusing the BJP of misusing the Central agencies against its political opponents. Interestingly, it was the Delhi Congress leadership, which had lodged the first complaint into the alleged excise scam.
Almost around the same time, former Punjab chief minister and senior Congress leader Charanjit Singh Channi was grilled by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau, under the AAP government, for alleged corruption. Kharge did not utter a word of sympathy or solidarity for one of his own former chief ministers.
The AAP had launched an aggressive campaign against the Congress leaders in the state after forming the government. Many senior Congress leaders and former ministers like Bharat Bhushan Ashu, Sukhpal Singh Khaira, Sadhu Singh Dharamsot, Kikki Dhillon, Sunder Shyman Arora, OP Soni etc were arrested by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau for alleged corruption.
No wonder when the ED arrested one of the AAP ministers, the Congress leadership in Punjab said the AAP was doing the same thing with its political opponents in Punjab, what, according to them, the BJP was doing at the national level.
As the AAP leaders have started feeling the heat from the Enforcement Directorate, the Congress has found a common cause with other two opposition parties, the BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal in hitting back at the AAP. Otherwise, the Congress does not see eye to eye with these two parties.
When the “all-powerful” Punjab minister Sanjeev Arora was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Saturday, Congress was at the forefront in hailing the action, as were the Akali and BJP leaders. No less a leader than Bhupesh Baghel, former Chhattisgarh chief minister and general secretary in charge for Punjab, described the AAP and BJP as the two sides of the same coin. Baghel himself is facing a probe by the ED in the alleged Mahadev betting app scam. His son was also jailed for some time. He refused to share the AAP charge that the ED was victimising its leaders like Arora.
Arora has been arrested for alleged money laundering by some companies linked to him. The case does not relate to him having done anything as a minister. His company is accused of having made fraudulent and bogus business transactions for “round-tripping” illegal money from Dubai. His company has denied any wrongdoings and has expressed full faith and confidence in the country’s judicial process.
There have been allegations of corruption against the AAP government during the last four years. Before Arora’s arrest, the ED raided the premises of a businessman, who is believed to be close to one of the “all powerful” OSDs of the chief minister. The opposition parties took no time in releasing the photographs of the particular OSD with the businessman raided by the ED.
Also read: Congress fails to capitalise on AAP’s vulnerability
Firebrand Akali leader, Bikram Singh Majithia, has demanded that look out circulars (LOCs) be issued so that all those people whose names have figured in the ED inquiry are prevented from fleeing the country. He claimed that all of them have gone into hiding.
Majithia himself spent some months in jail after he was charged with accumulating assets disproportionate to known sources of income. He has been hitting back at the AAP with a vengeance.
So is Congress leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira, who was also jailed twice during the AAP regime. In fact, Majithia and Khaira who at one point of time were fierce rivals, have buried the hatchet and have been hitting the AAP government quite hard.
While the entire AAP leadership has unanimously condemned the ED action, there are murmurs of discord within the ruling party. Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann were highly critical of the BJP accusing it of using the ED in Punjab ahead of the scheduled assembly election in early 2027.
Another minister and AAP state president Aman Arora is also alleged to be under the ED scanner after one of his close friends name had figured in a separate ED inquiry. Arora has denied any wrongdoing. Besides Sanjeev Arora, Aman Arora is the other prominent Hindu face of the AAP in Punjab.
Aman Arora is widely understood to be not getting along well with the Chief Minister. Both of them hail from Sangrur district.
The public posturing by the AAP leaders notwithstanding, there are reports that all is not well within the party. While seven of its Rajya Sabha members have already defected to the BJP, some more murmurs and rumblings are going on.
Moreover, the AAP’s biggest nemesis will be, if they are not already, Raghav Chadha and Sandeep Pathak, who have joined the BJP. Both of them were closely involved with the 2022 assembly elections in Punjab, which the party won with a landslide majority. They were instrumental in finalising the candidates for the 2022 assembly elections.
It is not only an aggressive opposition, though divided, that has found a common cause against the AAP. The party will have to be concerned about its own leaders and cadres who have felt ignored, overlooked and marginalised for a long time.
In fact, Sanjeev Arora was an example of how the AAP handed over power to someone who had absolutely no contribution towards the formation of the AAP in Punjab and subsequent landslide victory in the state. He, actually, did not have any political background before he was nominated to Rajya Sabha by the AAP in 2022. Within a span of three years, he became an MP, then won an assembly by-election and also ended up becoming a powerful minister holding three important portfolios of power, industry and local bodies, eventually landing in jail in the fourth year.
The AAP is actually facing an existential crisis in Punjab.
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