AAP leader and poet Kumar Vishwas, who has been a thorn in the party shoe on a few occasion, was removed as the organisation’s Rajasthan-in-charge on Wednesday. As per reports, he has been replaced with AAP’s national treasurer Deepak Bajpai.
As per AAP leader and journalist Ashutosh, Bajpai would be based out of Rajasthan to strengthen the party’s organisation and structure with regards to the upcoming assembly elections in the state. This development comes in light of AAP announcing its decision to contest the Rajasthan polls “with full strength”.
AAP leader Ashutosh claimed that the party’s political affairs committee (PAC) had congregated two days ago to discuss the issue of Rajasthan polls. Coming to the removal of Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh claimed that owing to “some realities” Vishwas couldn’t devote much time to the party’s operations in the state.
Incidentally Vishwas was absent from the PAC meeting where the decision to remove him was taken.
As per AAP’s Rajasthan coordinator Devender Shastri, Vishwas was inactive in the state and was neither visiting or talking about it. In contrast Bajpai supposedly moved to Jaipur about one and a half months back and had visited all the Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies. The party claims to have already selected some potential candidates for the polls.
Even though the AAP claims that Vishwas’ dismissal was a result of lack of interest, some may point out his recent frosty relationship with AAP’s top brass. In January Vishwas had openly criticised Kejriwal by claiming that it was “difficult to survive in the party if one disagreed with the AAP supremo”. This salvo was fired by Vishwas after supposedly being miffed over being overlooked as a Rajya Sabha candidate by the party.
Around the same time Vishwas had outright proceeded to expose Kejriwal on the surgical strike issue, where the AAP supremo had demanded proof of Indian Army’s heroics.