New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi has called for a special session of the Assembly on Friday from 11 am amid the huge political row over their charge that the BJP is trying to bring down the elected government by breaking the party.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is also the AAP chief, has summoned all the MLAs of the party on Thursday at 11 am. The summons came after a meeting of the party's political affairs committee on Wednesday evening.
Meanwhile, addressing a press conference here, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said Kejriwal is the "kingpin" of the liquor policy "scam" but he did not sign a single file in an attempt to avoid investigation.
Asked about the AAP's claim that the BJP tried to bribe four of its legislators in Delhi, Patra said: "They may have got such offers from liquor mafia. Why don't they tell the names of persons who approached them?"
AAP's political affairs committee condemned the BJP's efforts to "poach" its MLAs and asked the saffron party to tell the nation from where it has accumulated money to offer crores to legislators of other parties, party spokesperson Sanjay Singh said on Wednesday.
Speaking to the media after the meeting, which was presided by AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal, Singh, also the party's Rajya Sabha MP, said: "We want to assure the people that the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi is stable. None of our MLAs are going to switch sides and join the BJP," Singh told reporters.
Earlier in the day, the AAP claimed that the BJP has approached four of its legislators in Delhi, asking them to switch sides and join the saffron party or else, face "false cases, the CBI and the ED".
Addressing a press conference here, the national spokesperson of AAP said the MLAs — Ajay Dutt, Sanjeev Jha, Somnath Bharati and Kuldeep Kumar — have been approached by leaders of the BJP with whom they have "friendly relations".
"They (the four AAP legislators) have been offered Rs 20 crore each if they join the BJP and Rs 25 crore if they bring other MLAs along with them," Singh said. "They (BJP leaders) told our MLAs that if they do not accept the offer and join the BJP, they will also have to face false cases, the CBI and the ED like (Delhi Deputy Chief Minister) Manish Sisodia is facing," he added. "Attempts are being made to force AAP MLAs to break away from the party and topple the Delhi government by misusing probe agencies, sending people to offer money to them and threaten them of consequences if they do not switch sides," he said.
Singh claimed that the BJP leaders with whom Dutt, Jha, Bharati and Kumar have "friendly relations" came to meet them with the saffron party's "offer".
"The experiment that was successful in (the case of Shiv Sena MLA Eknath Shinde in Maharashtra) and failed in the case of Manish Sisodia is now being tried on our MLAs," he said.