NEW DELHI: Congress and
Aam Aadmi Party continued to snipe at each other on Sunday over the Centre's ordinance on Delhi's bureaucracy with Ajay Maken accusing Arvind Kejriwal's party of trying to sabotage opposition unity and AAP spokesperson
Saurabh Bhardwaj bringing up
Rahul Gandhi's 'mohabbat ki dukaan' slogan.
This followed a similar engagement between Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge at the opposition meeting in Patna last week, where the AAP chief pushed Congress to clear its stand on the Delhi services ordinance.
Congress, however, rebuffed the attempts on grounds that it would not allow the AAP chief to put "a gun to its head", and that parliamentary strategy would, as always, be discussed during the Parliament session.
Seemingly unmoved by the rebuff, AAP invoked Rahul's 'mohabbat ki dukaan' slogan in the hope to mellow the party's resistance to its overtures.
Bharadwaj said, "I always see that Rahul Gandhi talks about love and says that BJP spreads hate. So if Rahul Gandhi is running 'mohabbat ki dukaan' then whosoever comes to him can buy that love. When he said his party spreads love, then he has to show this also."
Unimpressed, Congress general secretary Maken underlined what the party's Punjab and Delhi leaders had told Kharge and Rahul at a meeting last month, where they not only called AAP "unreliable", but also cautioned the party against backing the Delhi CM and his party.
Maken alleged that Arvind Kejriwal's proclamations of opposition unity were not "for cohesion", but a "calculated move to sabotage it and curry favour with the BJP", and to prevent "going to jail" himself on corruption charges.
"Kejriwal seeks INC's help for the ordinance, yet unabashedly ridicules our esteemed leaders including
Ashok Gehlot and
Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan. His ministers place prerequisites on our alliance, while their chief spokesperson publicly disparages our party and leaders on the day of the opposition party meeting. To brazenly criticise, and then demand support, is this how alliances are sought, Mr Kejriwal?" he said.
Maken added while many have been "baffled" by Kejriwal's political manoeuvres in recent weeks, his "desperate attempts to evade imprisonment on corruption charges" were the reason for these actions.