Prashant Bhushan's Mail To AAP

In a mail, allegedly written by Prashant Bhushan, the lawyer registers his strong disapproval of the working of the party

Less than a month after it assumed power after a crushing victory in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party is back in news. This time, though, it is for the wrong reasons. There have been reports of rift between AAP National Convenor and Delhi CM, Arvind Kejriwal on one hand, and founder members Prashat Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav on the other.

The last revelation in the story is a mail purportedly written by Prashant Bhushan for internal circulation in AAP. The mail is reproduced below in full.

Dear Colleagues,

We are meeting almost after 6 months, in the wake of this massive success in the Delhi Assembly elections. It is a time of celebration and credit for this remarkable performance of our party must go to the thousands of volunteers who worked day and night – those who came from all across the world to campaign in Delhi and those who worked from all over the world on calling campaigns social media campaigns etc. But a great part of the credit must go to Arvind and his Delhi team which worked tirelessly and strategically to achieve this.

This historic victory was, in my view also the result of the dissatisfaction with the present BJP government which is now increasingly being seen as anti people. But most importantly, it shows that people have reposed great faith in our party which is seen as a different kind of party, very different from other political parties, which is seen and believed to a very different kind of politics based on principles of honesty, transparency, accountability, and participatory democracy. People who have reposed faith in our party have great expectations from us and expect us to stay true to our professed ideals. If we fail or falter on this count, we could fall as precipitously as we have risen.

So while we celebrate our victory, we must also recognize that we have faltered on several counts. The time has come therefore to take stock of the situation within the party to examine, take stock and truthfully introspect about the extent to which we have managed to stay true to our principles and ideals, where we have faltered and therefore what needs to be done to correct things within and strengthen the systems of the party.

Transparency and accountability:

 Our party was founded on the principles of transparency and accountability which is embedded in the vision document of the party. We had claimed that parties should come under RTI and we berated the BJP and the Congress for flouting the Information Commission directive to them to come under RTI. We said that we would put out all our accounts on a public website. But what is the reality today. Far from bringing the party under RTI, we have not even put our accounts on a website. We have put out our donations, but not expenses. We do not even put out decisions of our Constitutional bodies like the National Executive or the PAC on the website, what to say of the minutes. In fact as far as I am aware, even minutes or even decisions PAC or NE meetings are not maintained, what to say of making them transparent. We have reached a situation, where for this election in Delhi, far from putting out the list of shortlisted candidates on a public website for inviting information from the public and our volunteers, we were not even sharing the biodatas or even the names of the candidates selected by the DECG with the PAC for fear that they might leak out, even though under the Constitution, the candidates had to be approved by the PAC! The lack of recording decisions of the NE/PAC has led to situations where decisions taken by the NE (about not seeking Congress support for forming the government in Delhi after we resigned last year) were repeatedly flouted. Not only was a letter sent to the LG asking him to postpone the dissolution of the Assembly in June, but even as late as November, just before the actual dissolution of the Assembly, attempts were being surreptitiously made to seek Congress support to form the government again in Delhi without having to contest elections.

Our systems of accountability including our disciplinary committees and State Lokpals have become largely dysfunctional in many places, leading to a situation where many of our most dedicated volunteers are facing humiliation at the hands of people who call themselves office bearers and then misbehave with our dedicated volunteers. I know that even several decisions formally taken in the National disciplinary committee have not been implemented.

We don’t even have regular meetings of the NE or the PAC as required by the Constitution. Also, in the infrequent meetings of the PAC, some of the PAC members are often not even informed. In the absence of meetings of the NE, several decisions which need to be taken by the NE are being taken by the PAC. It is essential that there are regular meetings of the NE and the PAC and the decision making authority of the PAC needs to be more clearly defined. We also need to reconstitute the PAC to have better regional and gender balance. The NE also needs to be similarly expanded to have better gender and other balance, and to make it more broad based.

We urgently need to set up a committee to report on the systems of transparency and accountability which need to be rectified or set up to remedy the situation.

Inner party democracy and Swaraj:

Our party was born on the principle of inner party democracy and Swaraj. Unfortunately however, till today, we have not been able to even put out our lists of members and volunteers (active or otherwise), what to say of seeking or going by the views of our members/volunteers. We have not been able to hold any kind of election of any of our party units anywhere so far, in the absence of any lists of members or volunteers. This needs to be urgently rectified. The volunteer meetings to seek the views of volunteers about candidates in Delhi, were largely, I am told, a free for all, with nobody knowing whether the persons who attended or voted in the meeting were even from the State, or our volunteers, what to say of whether they were from the same constituency. This has made a mockery of our professed principles of Swaraj and has led to a lot of resentment and heartburning among our old dedicated volunteers. Many of them have complained to me that they were rudely and sometimes brutally silenced when they complained about the candidates being brought from other parties just before the elections in preference to our old dedicated volunteers. They have asked, “why has the party imported candidates from the BJP or Congress, who did not come to the party when the party was formed, nor even before the 2013 Assembly elections, nor even before the Lok Sabha elections, and who also had unsavoury reputations?” Our own party had complained against several of them that they distributed money and liquor or beat up our volunteers in the last elections, when they had contested on the tickets of other parties. One of them (the original Wazirpur candidate) went back to the BJP within a few hours of our giving him a ticket. Another was implicated in illegally importing and storing Liquor in the middle of the election. There was a video which surfaced about one of them where he is heard saying that it is OK to lure people to his Jan Sabha by offering them liquor. We did not cancel their tickets even after finding this out. One of them had been made the constituency prabhari and promised a ticket immediately after he agreed to take the rap for our party putting out a communal poster for which some of our volunteers were arrested. They are our current MLAs, and will be handling crores of MLA funds and will exercise several other powers such as giving PDS certificates etc. We will need to keep a tight check on them. Why should we not proactively put out all the details of MLA funds on a public website in real time.

Swaraj means allowing decentralized decision making. On those principles, it is the State Units who have to decide whether they should contest elections in the State. Yet we are deciding for them and ordering them not to contest elections. Even when the NE had decided to let the States decide whether to contest elections in their States, that decision was frustrated by Arvind deciding not to allow the States to contest elections. That Arvind’s decision may have been right in retrospect does not detract from the fact that we made a mockery of the principles of democracy and Swaraj. Even now, after the Delhi elections, in his speech on the day of oath taking, Arvind announced that the party should not contest elections in other States for the next 5 years. Though that may be his view, but such public airing of views by the convenor of the party at such an important function would naturally be taken to be the view of the party. Does this not violate the principles of Swaraj. All this, along with the One person centric campaign which was run during this election in Delhi, is making our party look more and more like the other conventional parties which are also one person centric, the only difference being that we still claim that we are wedded to the principles of Swaraj, while they don’t. Running a person centric campaign may be effective, but does that justify sacrificing our principles? We will need to make a conscious course correction if we are to get away from a supremo controlled party.

Policies of the Party

We had formed more than 30 expert committees consisting of more than a hundred experts, more than 2 years ago to formulate the policies of the party. Those committees had given their reports more than 18 months ago, but during all this time we have not been able to formalize them, because some of us did not have the time or the inclination for policies. For a National Party that we claim to be, it is essential that we have a view on important issues of policy in the country. Unfortunately, we have not been able to do that, with the result that our volunteers and spokespersons are often at a loss to react on such important issues which keep erupting from time to time. We must now rectify this without any further loss of time

Funds of the Party

The party now receives considerable donations. There is however no systematic planning of how these funds are to be spent. We do not have any empowered committee or decision making system of deciding how the funds are to be spent, with the result that such decisions are being made in an arbitrary manner by a few people who are not authorized by the National Executive to take such decisions. There are some volunteers who are paid by the party but a vast majority of them are not. Even these decisions need to be taken in a systematic and democratic manner.

Unethical means and practices

Unfortunately, we have also been using some unethical means for our ends. When AVAM was created by some volunteers who felt that the party was not listening to the voice of volunteers, an evil and unethical plan appears to have been hatched to crush AVAM. A volunteer of the party, Deepak Chowdhary was used to create an SMS messaging service in the name of AAVAAM and some SMSs were sent to some volunteers through this to the effect that volunteers should leave the party and join the BJP. These SMSs were then used to expel Karan Singh from the party. His pleas to investigate who sent the SMSs went unheeded by the party. Eventually, the police investigation on his FIR revealed that the SMS was sent by our volunteer Deepak Chowdhary who had nothing to do with AVAM. Yet, even after knowing this, no action was taken against him, obviously because he must have only acted on the orders of senior functionaries of the party.

The same unethical practice was resorted to in the matter of the Communal poster, published and put up by the party. Again when we were caught, we put up someone who agreed to be a fall guy and he was rewarded by being made the constituency incharge and then given a ticket by the party. Such unethical and indeed criminal practices must immediately cease and mechanisms be instituted to ensure that they do not recur

In conclusion, I would like to end by saying that our party has been built on the idealism and sweat and tears of thousands of dedicated volunteers who have sacrificed much to create a different kind or party. We owe it to them and to us to ensure that we do not drift and become just another, one man centric party, which is prepared to use any kind of means to attain power. Let us put systems in place to ensure that that does not happen.

With warm regards,

Prashant Bhushan