BJP leader Amit Malviya launched a fresh barrage of allegations against the Cockroach Janta Party, calling it a “pet project” of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. Posting a video of Kejriwal, Malviya claimed that the aim of the protests held at Jantar Mantar last month was to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP IT department head said it was always evident that CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and “his gang” shared deep links with AAP and the protests had nothing to do with NEET paper leak or educational reforms.
In the purported video, Kejriwal could be heard saying, “Is baar jitne log aaye the sadkon par, wo kis liye aaye the? Wo kewal mujhe nahin lagta ki Dharmendra Pradhan ka istifa mangne aaye rahe. Matlab agar main crude bhasha mein boloon, to Modi ji ko thokne aaye the. (The people who took to the streets this time, what did they come for? I don’t think they came merely to demand Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. To use crude language, they came to take on Modi ji).” The date and source of video posted by Malviya were unclear.
The alleged crude language used by Kejriwal provoked widespread response with several BJP leaders, including former AAP member Swati Maliwal, who accused the AAP supremo of “founding and funding CJP to hijack” students’ protest.
Malviya claimed that the former Delhi chief minister spilled the beans on the “sponsored” political project after the “cockroaches went rogue and stopped taking his calls”.
Training his guns on Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi, as he said, “Expose these charlatans – those who pretended to lead the protest but abandoned it at the right time to save themselves and their sponsors, like Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal.”
Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra hit out at Kejriwal for using, what he termed, “Maoist-style language” against the prime minister. “This is not a symbol of any ‘revolutionary uprising’ on his part, but rather the final, desperate cry of his moral and linguistic bankruptcy,” Mishra wrote on X.
Kejriwal says Modi govt fears protests
While AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal has not responded to the video posted by Malviya, he earlier alleged that PM Modi has grown fearful of public protests. On Friday, he took on the Centre’s newly introduced social media law earlier, saying it was intended to suppress criticism of the government.
Under the new law, social media platforms would be required to remove any post flagged by the government within three hours. Kejriwal alleged that the law would be used to remove posts critical of the government on issues such as paper leaks, the ethanol policy and corruption.
“If you speak against Modi ji, the government, paper leaks, the ethanol issue or corruption, your post will be deleted within three hours. But if people associated with them use abusive language or target women, no action is taken against such content,” he alleged.
Jantar Mantar protests
Last month, the CJP spearheaded the students’ agitation at Jantar Mantar against the NEET-UG paper leak that culminated in the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan from the post of Union education minister on July 25. The big decision followed nearly a month-long protest, which saw Ladakh educator Sonam Wangchuk hold a 26-day hunger strike along with several student leaders.
On July 20, CJP’s proposed protest march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament turned chaotic when police resorted to lathi-charge and fired tear gas shells to disperse the crowd. This further fueled the growing angst among the youth as students in large number continued to gather at the Jantar Mantar.
