Cong says Kejriwal tweet supporting the Centre’s decision to roll back certain constitutional provisions, granting special status to Jammu & Kashmir, exposes the AAP’s ‘double standards’; BJP says move prompted by his fear of losing majority votebank in the next Assembly elections in the national capital
NEW DELHI: CHIEF Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s surprise tweet in support of the Centre’s move to pull certain special privileges granted to Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcating the state into two centrally-administered Union Territories, may not have flummoxed his political opponents but it did evoke mixed signals from his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Be it leaders in the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Congress, all said they saw it coming.
Haroon Yusuf, the working president of Delhi Congress, said the CM’s support to the Centre’s call has exposed the AAP’s double standards. “We’ve been saying from Day One that the AAP is a B-team of the BJP. They espouse the same ideology as the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP’s ideological parent),” the Congress leader said.
Soon after the announcement that the President had signed an executive order abrogating Article 370, which granted certain special privileges for the people of Jammu & Kashmir, the CM tweeted, “We support the government on its decisions on J&K. We hope this will bring peace and development in the state.”
Ravinder Gupta, secretary of Delhi BJP, said it was the fear of losing the majority votebank in the run-up to the Assembly polls that prompted to the CM to pull his weight behind the Modi government on the Kashmir resolution.
Swati Maliwal, chairman of Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), tweeted her support to the resolution, saying, “Wholeheartedly welcome the decision of Centre to scrap Article 370 & fully integrate J&K with the rest of India.”
The CM’s non-confrontationist response, unlike several other Opposition leaders, surprised many as he had opened a front against the Centre in his tussle over administrative jurisdiction with the Lieutenant Governor and his demand for full statehood for the national capital.
An AAP leader, requesting anonymity, said the CM’s tweet was on expected lines as the party has been avoiding a direct conflict with the Centre over its policies, for quite some time now. “The Delhi elections may have a lot to do with it,” the leader said.
However, diverting from the CM’s line, AAP’s national executive member Preeti Sharma Menon, slammed the security clampdown in the Valley, tweeting, “The cowards first locked up Kashmiris, cut off their communication and then introduced the bill to revoke #Article 370. This is what will happen in every state, slowly but surely.”
Reacting to her post, the AAP leader said, “Some of us are still not aware of the change in the party’s stand (vis-à-vis the Centre). Preetiji’s comment is clearly not in line with the CM’s post.”
AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, too, drifted from the CM’s line, saying, “We don’t support the decision to make J&K a union territory.”