Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders, including the chief Arvind Kejriwal, have recently been under fire for allegedly beating up the Chief Secretary of Delhi. As usual, Arvind Kejriwal blamed the Centre and called the CS filing a complaint against AAP’s rowdy MLAs a BJP conspiracy. This shoot and scoot habit of AAP does not seem to have gone down too well with erstwhile AAP supporters. Many are being vocal about their displeasure and disappointment at the way the party has evolved.
Panag, who is a lawyer and son of Lieutenant General HS Panag (retired), an ordinary member of AAP and brother of Gul Panag, the politician who fought the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on AAP ticket from Chandigarh against Kirron Kher, has been a vocal supporter as well as a critic of Kejriwal. Yesterday he called out Kejriwal on his whataboutery and his attempt to derail the discourse.
The fall from the moral high ground is always a quick one and is accelerated by whataboutery. Comparing parliamentary secretaries in other states or deflecting to Judge Loya’s murder; is attune to demanding not to be penalised for breaking a law cause someone else did it first. https://t.co/uLXjIYsn8g
— Sherbir Panag ?? (@Sherbir) February 24, 2018
To that, a Twitter user responded that how the fact that a civil servant was allegedly manhandled gets more outrage than the fact that Arvind Kejriwal allegedly courted Khalistan separatists during 2014 elections is surprising, to say the least. To that, Panag responded with how she had ‘warned’ against the flirtation, but Kejriwal and his team paid no heed.
Poorly calculated flirtation that was. One I warned against. Repeatedly. It’s because they didn’t ‘get’ or ‘understand’ Punjab. Thought the K gang had electoral weightage. All of us from Punjab, knew better. But alas!
— Gul Panag (@GulPanag) February 24, 2018
Hang on, so had K gang been electorally relevant, you’d have been ok with it? And u KNEW of Kejriwal-Khalistan link but kept mum?!
— Abhinandan Singh (@abhinandan_ks) February 24, 2018
Does that mean Kejriwal and his team know the gravity of their associations? That they were warned about the dangerous territory they were playing on, but still went ahead? And what does it say about the AAP leaders and supporters who knew about it and kept silent? Just how important was winning the election for them that they chose to toy with the idea of giving away country in hands of separatists?
It is time Arvind Kejriwal answers a few questions, without blaming it on Modi, and hopefully, without beating someone up.