Vishwas attends national council, leaves in a huff

New Delhi: Tensions brewing within the AAP came to the fore at the party’s sixth national council meet during which the party’s founding member Kumar Vishwas was excluded from the list of speakers.

Supporters of Mr Vishwas and Okhla MLA Amanatulla Khan raised slogans against one another after the meet. The two have been loggerheads with each other for quite some time.

The poet-turned-politician, who has expressed displeasure with the party quite openly this year, has been slotted as a speaker at every AAP national council meeting held so far. This year, however, he was not included in the party’s speakers’ list.

When the turn came for the state conveners to speak, a handful of national council members demanded that Mr Vishwas be invited to speak, not in his capacity as Rajasthan chief, but as a national-level AAP leader. Even Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia invited Mr Vishwas to speak. But an angry Mr Vishwas, however, declined the offer and refused to speak.

He soon left the meeting, but not before taking a jibe at the party. Mr Vishwas said, “I thought only the Congress and the BJP were scared of me.” He said he would not leave the AAP and speak only when he thought the time was ripe.

This comes at a time when tensions between Mr Vishwas and party chief Arvind Kejriwal are on the rise again. After the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections, in which the AAP was routed by the BJP, Mr Vishwas had openly criticised the direction the party was taking.

Two days before the national council meeting, Mr Vishwas had hinted someone was pulling the strings from behind Mr Khan.