NEW DELHI: The BJP came under attack from the AAP and several other quarters for its advertisement in which it tags Arvind Kejriwal as ‘updravi gotra’ ( anarchist clan), both of them knocking on the doors of the Election Commission in the last leg of the Delhi elections.
Remembering the lessons he learnt from Anna Hazare, Kejriwal said, “The BJP in the past few days has been giving few advertisements personally attacking me. They attacked me and my children, I kept quiet because Anna used to say that if someone personally attacks you, you should have the strength to bear it. But today they have crossed their limits.”
“They have called the entire community ‘updravi’. The BJP’s fight is with me, whatever they have to say they should say it against me, they should not attack the entire Aggarwal community,” he added.
While the BJP, in its feeble defense, went to the Election Commission stating that the AAP was unnecessarily stretching its word in an attempt to communalise and divide society on caste basis. In their complaint, the BJP leaders have said that the AAP was violating the Model Code of Conduct by unnecessarily stretching and imputing meanings to the words used in an advertisement. “The BJP treats all the castes as equal and does not believe in caste politics. The word gotra ‘used in the advertisement is used as a metaphor. The word “updravi gotra” used for saying that he belongs to an anarchist clan, which he himself claims to be,” the complaint said.
“We have highlighted to the EC about the unfortunate incident of use of caste in the election process (by the AAP) which is in violation of the Code of Conduct,” Union Minister Piyush Goyal said.
The AAP has also gone to the Election Commission to file a complaint against the BJP advertisement for targeting Kejriwal’s sub caste.
The BJP advertisement targets Kejriwal for threatening to disrupt the Republic Day parade last year while complaining this year that he was not been invited for the event.