“The party sold my ticket for Rs 20 crore,” Badarpur MLA hits out at AAP leadership

The Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party came to power with many populist promises like free water, power etc; but one promise that resonated most with the voters in the corruption ridden politics of the country was: corruption free government and governance.

Arvind Kejriwal, who capitalized on his newcomer identity five years ago, has become a seasoned politician with 5 years term as Chief Minister of Delhi. His maturity as politician is visible in ticket distribution strategy of the party. Five years ago, the party vetted almost every candidate on various indicators, but in the latest ticket distribution, many newcomers and turncoats were given tickets for money; alleged many former party members.

Kejriwal is sure of winning the 2020 assembly election; and he knows that it is AAP’s brand of politics- radical populism- which will him the election, not the candidates. Therefore, the party has allegedly started ‘selling’ the tickets.

AAP MLA from Badarpur N. D. Sharma resigned from the party on Tuesday, and accused party chief Arvind Kejriwal and senior leader Manish Sisodia of selling the ticket for 20 crore rupees. “The party sold the ticket for Rs 20 crore to a man against whom I fought and saved the area from,” said Sharma. “The man has been asking money from the MLAs. He (Kejriwal) asked me also to give Rs 10 crore to the party,” the sitting MLA added.

The statement comes in the backdrop of Sharma being dropped as AAP candidate from the Badarpur constituency, and the ticket given to Ram Singh Netaji – a former Congress leader- who joined the party a few days ago. Netaji was MLA from the Badarpur constituency for two times on a Congress ticket.

Apart from Netaji, there are four other turncoats/new members who were given AAP tickets just a few days after joining the party. From Harinagar constituency, Rajkumari Dhillon, a former Congress member who joined the party days before AAP decided assembly candidates, was given ticket from Haripur constituency.

Another Congress member who joined the party few days ago, Naveen Chaudhary (Deepu), was given ticket from Gandhinagar constituency.

From Dwarka seat, Congress party leader Vinay Kumar Mishra was given AAP ticket and former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s grandson Adarsh Shastri, who won the seat for AAP in 2015 assembly election, was denied the ticket.

From the Bawana constituency, social activist Jai Bhagwan Upkar, who joined the party on December 13, has been given the party ticket.

These 5 leaders joined the party a few days before the tickets were finalized, and were given APP ticket. Most of these leaders are former Congress members, who allegedly became rich during the 15 years of Congress regime under Sheila Dixit. Now these leaders left the Congress party as the probability of Congress party winning a single seat is near zero. But, these leaders are rich and have considerable social influence in the constituency, and therefore, they bring money as well as social network for the AAP.

AAP has dropped a total of 15 MLAs from the party candidature from constituencies, and fielded new members or turncoats. Delhi Cantonment MLA Surender Singh, a 26/11 hero in fight against terrorists, said he was “shocked and extremely perturbed” by the party decision to not field him from constituency. “I had worked very hard. Mahilayein yahaan par mera geet gaati hain (women here sing my praise),” he claimed.

It is very much evident that, as AAP is sure of winning the 2020 assembly elections, it distributed tickets to the people who could contribute to party funds. This strategy was mastered by Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, where she used to distribute tickets in exchange of money for the seats with higher SC population, as the party was sure of winning those seats.