AAP removes Kumar Vishwas as party in-charge for Rajasthan polls, replaces him with national treasurer Deepak Bajpai

The political affairs committee (PAC) of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) removed Kumar Vishwas as the party in-charge for the Rajasthan Assembly elections, and appointed its national treasurer Deepak Bajpai as his replacement.

“Bajpai will be the in-charge of the Assembly elections in Rajasthan. Vishwas was not able to devote time for election preparations due to his preoccupations,”AAP national spokesperson Ashutosh said on Wednesday. He said the AAP will contest the Assembly polls in Rajasthan — which are due later in 2018 — with full strength.

He added that Bajpai will prepare the list of candidates for the polls in the state and it would be finalised by the PAC.

The sudden development comes against the backdrop of an internal conflict between Vishwas—a senior leader and party founder—and the party’s top leadership.

Recently, Vishwas refused to follow other AAP leaders embroiled in a defamation suit against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and tender an apology.

Jaitley filed the case in the Delhi High Court against six AAP leaders: Vishwas, Bajpai, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Raghav Chadha, Ashutosh, and Sanjay Singh.

While Kejriwal began issuing apologies for the remarks made by him against his political opponents in March, Vishwas said he would contest the defamation cases against him.

However, reports of a rift first emerged in June, 2017 when Vishwas skipped an iftaar party organised by the Delhi government. He also stayed away from campaigning in Punjab in 2017, and Rajasthan in January.

A controversial video further strained the relationship between Kejriwal and Vishwas, who were once close. “If, in Delhi, you form a government on the anti-corruption plank with the promise of freedom from corruption and fall silent and try to protect your own people when they come under the scanner, you will be questioned by people”, Vishwas said in the video.

While Kejriwal publicly gave Vishwas the thumbs up for the candid talk, a source told Firstpost that privately, the Delhi chief minister was extremely upset. Another source also revealed that when Vishwas continued with his “principled” talks with party workers, Kejriwal purportedly told him: “I will finish you but I will not turn you into a martyr”.

In January, AAP had also denied Vishwas a seat in Parliament.

With inputs from agencies