By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net
It was a humid Monday evening when Sanjay Singh, Rajya Sabha MP and UP president of Aam Aadmi Party, reached the Beniabagh ground in Varanasi to address a rally. Singh was accompanied by Raghu Thakur, a leader associated with Loktantrik Samajwadi Party.
On the anniversary of the Emergency imposed during Indira Gandhi’s tenure, AAP’s call in Varanasi was to address the “undeclared emergency” being allegedly imposed in India by the current Narendra Modi government.
Shatrughan Sinha, the BJP MP from Patna Sahib constituency, was also present as one of the chief speakers in the event. Yashwant Sinha, a BJP lawmaker in the previous Atal Bihari Vajpayee government who resigned from the party in April this year, also supported AAP’s rally and addressed the gathering through a phone call.
Yashwant Sinha pointed out the loopholes in the current government and said that the country is going into the incumbent phase as well as in the undeclared emergency state.
Shatrughan Sinha, while refuting any speculations that he might be joining AAP, said, “I am committed member, as I am in BJP, as of now.”
The actor-turned-politician further said, “We all know that Dalits and Muslims of this country are facing their worst times in these years. There is no security for them available in the society. Is the Government trying to dictate what should be in our plates and what not? Isn’t this kind of emergency we are talking about?”
Pointing out towards the failure of demonetisation and implementation of GST, Sinha reiterated that government did not think it through before implementing such measures.
Lashing out at the right-wing trolls, Sinha said, “Instead of providing jobs to common youth, they have employed few hundreds of men in their war room whose jobs are to troll and to abuse anyone who raises any question at the government.”
Following the rally, the AAP started a march to Ballia. The motive of the march and the rally is to make people aware of the failed promises of Narendra Modi. The march is scheduled to reach Ballia on July 8 where it is planned to end with another public rally, however, the participation of Shatrughan Sinha and Yashwant Sinha is not clear.
While addressing the rally, Raghu Thakur said, “It takes courage to be a fascist, but Narendra Modi is a coward, so he is not one.”
Thakur and others raised the issues of the killing of intellectuals such as Gauri Lankesh, MM Kalburgi, Govind Pansare, and Narendra Dabholkar, and ongoing lynching incidents across the country. This was a marked change in stance from the Aam Aadmi Party which has hitherto focused almost solely on corruption and related issues but rarely opened itself towards issues pertaining to hate and violence.
Prior to this, Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, held one rally in the same Beniabagh park in 2016 taking farmers issues in hands. However, locals have no knowledge where AAP wants to go with such rallies.
Even after his 2016 rally, people formulated the idea that AAP might go for the assembly election, but the party went idle and showed no activity until Monday rally.
While AAP has no visible presence in Uttar Pradesh, having rebel BJP leaders on its stages is only likely to help the AAP consolidate its anti-BJP stance but given that the party has tried this strategy in the past, only time will tell if this actually helps the AAP.