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The Delhi CM’s ‘blinding greed for power’ can be seen by the voters, which is why AAP has won nothing recently, says the estranged former AAP leader

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has become an “autocratic party” from a democratic one – only marginally better than the parties it had once set out to defeat, according to its estranged founding member Mayank Gandhi.

At the launch of his book AAP and Down in New Delhi, Gandhi described the transformation party chief Arvind Kejriwal has gone through, saying earlier he used to be “ruthless” and “cold-blooded” in his passion to improve the country, but now, he was only ruthless and cold-blooded to garner votes for himself and his party.

“I loved the passion he had, but now it’s just about getting votes. That’s why he is running around trying to make alliances with the Congress these days,” Gandhi told ThePrint.

“His positions are also opportunistic. He used to criticise (Narendra) Modi so much. That completely stopped after he lost in Punjab. Now either Modi was not all that evil ever, or has now suddenly become a fairy,” he quipped.

However, Kejriwal’s “blinding greed for political power” can be seen by the voters, who have not voted for the party anywhere after the sacking of former AAP leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, Gandhi argued. “The elections for the 20 seats whose AAP MLAs have been disqualified will be the litmus test for Kejriwal,” he said.

Kejriwal is insecure

Elaborating on an assertion he makes in his book about Kejriwal being insecure and falling for conspiracy theories, Gandhi said: “You see, knowing Kejriwal so closely, I know he’s very opportunistic, but also easy to manipulate. He buys into conspiracy theories.

“But if he believed that Yogendra (Yadav) was giving interviews against him and working against the party, why did he keep him as the national spokesperson for three months? Was he waiting to use him to win the election and then remove him?”.

Yadav, who is now the president of Swaraj India, and Prashant Bhushan were sacked from AAP in 2015 for alleged anti-party activities.

Forming a political party a mistake?

While Gandhi threw his weight behind the idea of forming a political party out of the India Against Corruption movement, in retrospect, he said “the movement should have remained a pressure group. We left a vacuum in that space”.

The “downfall” of the AAP, he said, was not electoral. “The party is down on its principles,” Gandhi said. “Thanks to what the movement has been reduced to, it will take generations of people to put faith in another movement. AAP has absolutely abandoned the promise of an alternative political discourse which it had come to power with.”

While the party may keep winning and losing elections “like Lalu’s”, this is not the party with “alternative politics”, he said.

Many analysts expect a grand alliance to be formed against the BJP for the 2019 general elections, but he doesn’t think Kejriwal will have a prominent role in it. “AAP will probably get two seats in Delhi, and one in Punjab. How will he have an important role?” he asked.

As for him, politics is a closed chapter. “I have realised that it was not suitable for me. I got offers from the BJP and the Congress, but my politics is limited to developmental politics,” he said.

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