Former AAP leader and poet Kumar Vishwas has said that AAP supremo and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has no qualms in taking support of pro-Khalistani elements and organizations to win the Punjab assembly elections.

Vishwas says he warned Kejriwal against dabbling with the separatists during the last Punjab elections (held in 2017), but Kejriwal shrugged it off and told him not to worry. Kejriwal explained his ‘formula’ to win the 2017 elections and become CM, saying he would give tickets to Bhagwant Mann (AAP’s ‘declared’ CM candidate for the upcoming election) and Phoolka (another ex-AAP leader), said Vishwas.

“Today also he (Kejriwal) is on the same path…or he will place some puppet (on the CM post). He told me such terrifying things, which many in Punjab know…he told me one day ‘don’t worry, I will one day become the CM of an independent suba (region)’. I said this is sedition. ISI and other separatist groups are funding and preparing for (Khalistani) Referendum 2020. Kejriwal replied, ‘so what, then I will become the first PM of an independent nation’. This man’s thought process is such that he doesn’t care about separatism etc, he just wants power at any cost, ” added Vishwas.

Kumar Vishwas was a member of Kejriwal’s core group, right from his activist days, but has since fallen out like many-2 others.

This will not come as a surprise to observers who have followed AAP’s politics closely ever since it emerged on the national scene in 2013, riding on the wave of the Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev led anti-corruption movements against UPA’s monumental scams. There is no U-turn or underhanded trick that Kejriwal and his die-hard coterie (Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh etc) has not adopted. Many of the original members of AAP – some of them no saints themselves – like Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Mayank Gandhi, Shazia Ilmi, Kapil Mishra etc. have left the party, unable to handle the flip-flops, utter disregard for morality and sociopathic narcissism that are Kejriwal’s calling cards.

As for those wondering why Kejriwal wants to become CM of Punjab when he is already CM of Delhi? Well, Delhi is not a full-fledged state and is similar to a UT (Union Territory), with the difference being that the National Capital Territory of Delhi has a legislative assembly and council of ministers. The Union Govt. still has a major say in policing and some other areas of governance related to the national capital. Kejriwal has been demanding full statehood for Delhi for a long time now. Becoming CM of a full state like Punjab would be the next step towards his national ambitions, and something that he believes would put him in the same league as Mamata, YSR etc as a PM candidate.

AAP’s Khalistan links are well established

As for AAP’s dealings with Khalistanis, it is an open secret. AAP member Gul Panag had revealed in 2018 that AAP ‘flirted’ with separatist Khalistani elements, despite her ‘warning’, during 2017 Punjab assembly polls as the party believed that Khalistan supporters carried some electoral weightage in the state. She is the daughter of Lt. Gen. (retd) HS Panag (twitter handle @rwac48), an AAP supporter and trenchant critic of the Modi government. Why Gul Panag chose to make that revelation an year after the polls, and why she still continues to cheer for AAP, are questions that beg their own answer.

Even before Panag’s admission, it was clear that AAP was not just dabbling with extremists, some of its own leaders and MLAs harbored pro-Khalistan views:

• Jarnail Singh, AAP leader who became MLA from Rajouri Garden in 2015 Delhi elections but left that seat to contest the Punjab 2017 election where he lost, had addressed a rally of Khalistan supporters in London, UK in 2011. A video also surfaced which shows Jarnail Singh accepting the demand of Khalistan. After losing the 2017 election, Singh distanced himself from AAP. In 2020, Jarnail Singh abused Hindu deities in a Facebook post, giving AAP an opportunity to suspend him to ostensibly defend ‘secularism’. It is not known whether any police action was taken against Singh for his Hinduphobic post.

• In 2015, then AAP MP from Patiala Dharamveer Gandhi claimed that the party was playing a dangerous game by providing support to the protests carried out by radical Sikh groups for the release of pro-Khalistani terrorists.

• In the run up to 2017 Punjab elections, many rallies held by AAP’s Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh and MP Bhagwant Mann saw the attendees waving the portraits of Khalistani terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Many AAP leaders were also present during the “Sarbat Khalsa” of 10 November 2015, where resolutions demanding a separate Sikh nation were passed.

• Pro-Khalistani outfits had declared support to AAP during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

• While campaigning for the 2017 Punjab elections, Kejriwal stayed at the house of former chief of terror outfit Khalistan Liberation Front (KLF) Gurwinder Singh. Singh is accused of inciting Sikh-Hindu riots during the years when terrorism was at its peak in Punjab, and was even jailed in cases relating to murder and other heinous crimes. Incredibly, he was later acquitted and went to England from where he allegedly continues working for KLF.

Media downplays Vishwas’s stunning charge, reduces it to routine political squabbling

For Lutyens based ‘national’ media, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal is a leading light of the left-liberal bulwark against ‘Hindu nationalists’ represented by Narendra Modi. So even if Kejriwal himself votes in favor of Khalistan Referendum 2020, they will look the other way or somehow deflect the news.

The India Today report on the serious charge levelled by Kumar Vishwas was presented as just a routine political row with BJP and AAP trading charges. The report even adds, “However, Vishwas didn’t mention Kejriwal’s name.” Anyone with half a brain can understand whom Vishwas is referring to. Also, Vishwas was clearly talking to an ANI reporter, so BJP official handles sharing the video is not the news here!

This is the state of Indian mainstream English-language media today: so-called national parties like AAP, Congress, TMC are amplifying voices that advocate a break-up of the nation, and our intelligentsia and media cheer these parties as upholders of ‘liberalism and democracy’!?