NEW DELHI: The Delhi unit of BJP on Tuesday dared Minister Atishi to furnish proof of the allegations made by her against their party, else tender an unconditional apology.
Earlier in the day, Delhi Minister Atishi had alleged that the BJP approached her to join the party to “save my political career”. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader also claimed that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) would arrest her in a month if she refused to switch over.
Responding o the claims, Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva said that the BJP is not running any “Operation Lotus” nor will it, if the AAP leaders are leaving the party, it is because they have realised Kejriwal’s “game of lies”.
“Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj should present evidence of the allegations associated with their Operation Lotus immediately or apologise to BJP, or get ready for legal action,” Sachdeva warned during a joint press conference.
BJP MP from the northeast Delhi constituency Manoj Tiwari said that Minister Atishi must be worried that the chief minister seems to have taken her and Saurabh Bharadwaj’s name, saying the middleman Vijay Nair used to meet them.
“If that is the case, their own leader is pointing a finger towards them. You just can’t turn around and attack the BJP on some false allegation or false narrative in the hope that the questions that are being asked will not be asked,” he said.
Tiwari said that when Kejriwal went to court seven days ago, he did not take the names of Saurabh and Atishi then as he believed that his wife Sunita Kejriwal would become the party’s next Chief Minister, “but when that did not happen, he took their names and paved the way for their imprisonment.
“It is clear that the party is not accepting Sunita as Chief Minister, and when the party refused to accept, Kejriwal started to sweat, and when the Honorable Court sent a 15-day custody notice, he also paved the way for Atishi and Saurabh to go to jail,” said Tiwari.