By Rifat Jawaid

Follow me on twitter @RifatJawaid

I kind of agree with Yogendra Yadav and other AAP leaders when they say they don’t accept cash primarily to ensure there’s no inflow of black money into the party’s account.

I would have been surprised if they didn’t have this procedure in place. Afterall their claim to enter politics was to cleanse the existing system and not do more of the same.

I’m no expert on how AAP functions, but was a witness to something which I found pretty impressive and that tipped the scale for me on this issue!

On Sunday, when I arrived at Arvind Kejriwal’s residence to interview him, I saw a big crowd outside the AAP chief’s apartment.

One of them told me that they had come all the way from Telenagana and wanted to personally hand over some donation to Kejriwal while wishing him luck for the Delhi elections.

While making our way out of the compound, Kejriwal asked his driver to stop the car at the main gate. The enthusiastic AAP volunteers jostled for quick handshakes with their party supremo. One of them gave a bundle of cheques while some brought out cash and insisted that Kejriwal accepted them.

Pat came Kejriwal’s firm reply, ” nahi ham woh nahi lete.’

And even while accepting cheques, the AAP leader made a point to remind the donors that they needed to write all the relevant details on the back of the cheques.

I also agree with Meera Sanyal, a reputed banker, that the responsibility to verify the authenticity of bank accounts and pan numbers lies with the banks and not with the beneficiaries.

I would have expected Arun Jaitley to have asked the banks in question to furnish all the details related to the donors’ accounts before going public. It seems Piyush Goel had no prior discussion with his senior cabinet colleague in Modi government. Had he done so, he would have spared his party, the BJP, the embarrassment this episode has caused. Accusing a party of accepting hawala money by cheques simply doesn’t hold water.

A BJP source told me “we ought to have paid due attention to the detail before jumping in excitement and throwing our weight behind a group of disgruntled former AAP members. This is not a good news for us.”

Delhi elections are less than 5 days away and the AAP’s counter allegations of a clandestine deal between the BJP and AVAM may cause more embarrassment to the party. Voters, particularly in Delhi, are smart. Plenty of them from across Delhi have told me that the BJP’s offensive against AAP on this issue only smacked of its desperation to defame Kejriwal, who seems to have taken quite a substantial lead in all opinion polls.

Mindful of the future impact on the party’s electoral fortunes, the BJP has roped in the services of the entire cabinet with dozens of MPs being summoned from other states to campaign in Delhi. None of these measures appear to have had any desirable effect yet. The anxiety in the BJP camp, therefore, is pulpable. That may explain why many are now terming the developments related to money laundering as yet another desperate attempt to counter AAP’s soaring popularity in Delhi. Whether it works or not, we will know on February 10.

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