On April 2, Aam Aadmi Party held a rally in the Bapunagar area of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in view of upcoming Assembly elections scheduled for December 2022. While Delhi Chief Minister and AAP’s national convener made tall claims during his rally and urged people to vote for the party, there were allegations that they distributed money to lure the crowd.
Amusingly, during his visit to Gujarat, Kejriwal had made tall claims that Delhi is free of corruption and that Punjab is also corruption-free in just 10 days of Mann taking over as Chief Minister. That his party cadres tried to ‘bribe’ Gujaratis to attend the rally, kind of contradicts the tall claims.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT Cell chief Amit Malviya shared a video on his Twitter handle where AAP workers could be allegedly seen distributing money to the attendees in an alley. HE wrote, “AAP distributing cash to people to participate in Arvind Kejriwal’s roadshow in Gujarat,” and called it “revolutionary”.
A similar video was shared by media house Desh Gujarat that started with a video of a man sitting in an auto who alleged he was paid to attend the rally. He said people were paid Rs 500 to come to the event. He further claimed he was not aware that it was a political rally.
BJP national spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala said in a tweet, “Following “Gandhi” but the wrong one (perhaps their favourite one – Rahul) 1) Distributing cash to get a crowd for roadshow 2) giving a discount of 25% for liquor on Navratri 3) Mocking Hindus and their Genocide in Kashmir 4) lying about 300 units free electricity.”
Notably, this is not the first time AAP has been accused of distributing money to gather a crowd. In February 2021, allegations were levelled by labourers from Delhi that AAP did not pay them the Rs 500 that they had promised in exchange for attending the rally.
In February 2020, AAP allegedly outsourced campaigning for the Delhi Assembly elections. Not only the agency hired by the party force job-seeking youth to campaign for AAP, but they did not pay those who came late for the rally.