AAP may ease out the old guard

The young force behind Arvind Kejriwal in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is gearing up to shunt out “armchair intellectuals” Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, whose clout has substantially diminished since the party’s resounding victory in the recent Assembly polls.

At the upcoming meeting of the party on Wednesday, the veterans are expected to be dropped from the Political Affairs Committee.

The situation bears an uncanny resemblance to the churning within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after its historic victory in the last General Elections.

Margdarshak Mandal BJP’s veteran stalwarts Atal Behari Vajpayee, LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were relegated to the largely ornamental ‘Margdarshak Mandal’, which has no role in the party’s functioning, after the elections. In the AAP’s case, the party was built from scratch in two years by a group of young party workers such as Dilip Pandey, Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh and Ashish Khetan — led by Arvind Kejriwal.

The “old guard” is now expected to be sidelined by the younger lot headed by Kejriwal, much like the ‘Margdarshak Mandal’ in the BJP. Except, in the AAP, the “veterans” may not even be accommodated in a token role.

Prashant Bhushan had distanced himself from the Delhi campaign as he questioned the candidate selection process. However, his father, Shanti Bhushan, a founding member of the party, publicly supported Kejriwal’s main rival Kiran Bedi during the campaign.

Centre of attention Bhushan’s bitterness is evident in the letter he wrote to the AAP’s national executive, which met last Thursday. “A one person-centric campaign, which was run during the Delhi elections, is making our party look more and more like other conventional parties that are also one-person centric… Running a one person-centric campaign may be effective, but does that justify sacrificing our principles?

“We will need to make a conscious course correction if we have to get away from a supremo-controlled party,” Bhushan said.

In Yogendra Yadav’s case, the reasons for his marginalisation are linked to differences between him and Kejriwal on whether the AAP should expand nationally.

Kejriwal wants to consolidate in Delhi while Yadav wants the party to grow nationally.

The tussle is also rooted in the fact that Yadav and, to some extent, the AAP’s internal Lokpal, Admiral Ramdas, believe that institutional mechanisms in the party _ for instance, the Political Affairs Committee and the National Executive — should have more powers.