Aam Aadmi Party will contest the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections independently, party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said on Friday, signalling a clear break from the INDIA bloc with which it had aligned during the Lok Sabha elections.
Speaking during his visit to Patna, Singh, who serves as AAP's Bihar in-charge, launched a broadside against both the BJP and its rivals in the INDIA coalition, accusing them of political expediency, voter manipulation, and internal disarray.
“We will contest the upcoming Assembly polls alone,” Singh declared. “Look at the state of affairs in the (INDIA) coalition. Leaders like Pappu Yadav and Kanhaiya Kumar were shoved aside. What can one say of such a formation?”
The remark was in reference to a reported incident during a recent INDIA bloc rally, where Yadav and Kanhaiya were allegedly prevented from joining Rahul Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav, and other senior leaders on the campaign vehicle. Although Yadav later denied attempting to climb the vehicle, Singh used the episode to underscore his party’s disenchantment with the alliance.
Singh also backed the INDIA bloc’s charge that BJP was orchestrating wrongful deletions from the electoral rolls, saying, “Such wrongful deletions have been happening. It happened in Delhi where the BJP got thousands of names deleted. Most of the people whose names were deleted wrongfully happened to be our migrant brethren from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, but they were branded as Bangladeshi migrants.”
Also read: AAP emerges as central political force in Punjab
He accused the BJP of hypocrisy in its rhetoric on illegal immigration, particularly in Bihar’s Seemanchal region. “But what has it been doing during the 20 years it has been in power in the state? If indeed there are illegal immigrants, on whom was the onus to drive them out?” he asked.
Turning his criticism towards the Centre’s actions in Delhi, Singh alleged that since the BJP took charge, slums had been demolished, displacing migrants from Bihar and West Bengal. “West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is right in alleging that migrants from her state are also being targeted,” he added.
On the foreign policy front, Singh stood by Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, who had mocked Narendra Modi’s visits to smaller nations. The jibe prompted a rare reaction from the Ministry of External Affairs, which criticised the remarks.
Singh, however, dismissed the government’s response as theatrical. “The BJP is very good at creating a spectacle (dramebaazi) and therefore it got the MEA to jump into the matter. In any case, Mann did not say anything that demeaned the office of the PM. Modi's visit to countries of little significance like Papua New Guinea is, indeed, bewildering,” he said.
“The Punjab CM was right in questioning the priorities of the PM who seems to have little time for his own country of 144 crore people,” Singh said.
He further claimed that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat had sent “a very big signal” to Modi through his recent remark that people above 75 should not be in active public life.
“It is a very big signal (bada ishara) to the PM from his ideologue. He must step down in time and follow the example he had himself sought to set by packing off leaders like Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Sumitra Mahajan on the ground of old age,” Singh remarked.
Follow us
