Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) on Monday accused Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) of scripting the long-running anti-CAA protests at Shaheen Bagh. It said the protests which led to over three-month-long road blockade was strategised by the BJP to polarise the February assembly elections.
AAP alleged that the Shaheen Bagh protest was “pre-planned” by the BJP ahead of February elections to win more seats. It also said that the BJP played an important role in inciting communal violence in northeast Delhi that claimed 53 lives.
Addressing a news conference, AAP chief spokesperson Suarabh Bhardwaj said “pro-democracy” citizens must be feeling “cheated and manipulated” as it was BJP who “pulled the strings” of the protests. He then questioned the Central government that how they allowed the protests to run for 101 days when other protests in the city could not even last over three hours.
“It was because the BJP planned and executed the Shaheen Bagh protests that its vote percentage rose from 18% to 38% in the recently concluded Delhi elections. The BJP used the protest to polarise the north-east Delhi region and it won some seats there as well. After that, it engineered a riot there. Today, the people who raised anti-national slogans or pro-Pakistan slogans or talked about dividing India during the protests are part of the BJP,” Bhardwaj alleged.
His comment came a day after the BJP announced that a group of Muslims from Shaheen Bagh have joined the party.
The BJP denied the claim, saying AAP was making baseless stories to attract the support from minority communities ahead of the municipal elections in Delhi.
“The AAP has misled people in Delhi, especially the Muslim community, for its political gains. Their allegations have no meaning as the Muslim community supports the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now, with the municipal elections scheduled in 2022, the AAP is nervous about losing its support base in the community,” said Delhi BJP chief, Adesh Gupta.
