AAP’s Chandni Chowk MLA Alka Lamba was disqualified from the Delhi Assembly on Thursday on grounds of defection.
The disqualification petition was moved by AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj days after she tweeted that the “time has come to say goodbye” and urged AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal to “accept her resignation” over Twitter on September 6. She had also tweeted her picture with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, which left media contemplating her return to her old party.
“Arvind Kejriwal Ji, your spokespersons asked me as per your desire, with the full arrogance that the Party will accept My resignation even on Twitter. So pls Kindly accept My resignation from the primary membership of the ‘Aam Aadmi Party’, which is now a ‘Khas Aadmi Party’,” Lamba had said in her tweet.
Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel on Thursday disqualified Chandni Chowk MLA Alka Lamba from the legislative assembly. Lamba was dismissed on the grounds of defection. According to reports, she was summoned by the Speaker in connection with Bharadwaj’s letter in which he sought her disqualification from the assembly.
The AAP’s ‘disgruntled’ MLA from Chandni Chowk had been complaining since over a year that she is being shunned by party leadership and has been time and again saying that it was time for her to leave the party but was somehow not officially resigning.
Notably, senior leaders in AAP were ready to accept her resignation but she was not resigning despite announcing it several times. AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj had stated that Lamba has ‘announced’ her impending resignation over a dozen times but is yet to actually resign. He had added that the party will accept her resignation even on Twitter.
Interestingly, weeks after she was asked to resign, party chief, Arvind Kejriwal had ‘unfollowed’ Alka Lamba on Twitter and removed her from WhatsApp groups.
On Wednesday, however, Alka Lamba, responding to the petition to disqualify her, backtracked and said that she had never submitted her resignation in writing and that her tweets didn’t count.
“I was asked if I had joined the Congress officially. I told him (Speaker Ram Niwas Goel) no. He also asked if I resigned from the AAP in written, I again said no. These two are facts and truth. My picture with Sonia Gandhi was shown in the Assembly. When asked about it, I showed Arvind Kejriwal’s photo with Lalu Prasad Yadav and asked what could be implied,” she said.
Lamba was associated with the Congress for over 20 years before she joined the Aam Aadmi Party in 2014.
