AAP faces a setback in Gujarat’s Surat after 6 corporates join the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP), a party functionary said on Saturday. These corporates joined the BJP late Friday party in the presence of Home Minister of Gujarat, Harsh Sanghavi.
In the February 2021 Surat Municipal Corporation election, AAP performed well and emerged as the opposition party by winning 27 seats in the 120 member civic body. While the Congress couldn’t hold any seat, BJP had 93 votes.
Five AAP corporates had joined BJP in February 2022 but out of five corporates one came back to AAP. Now 6 corporates leaving AAP have made its strength to come down to 17. Home Minister of Gujarat, Sanghavi said, “AAP corporates have left AAP and joined BJP and the country has become a spectator to watch the true face of AAP.”
Ruta Kheni, one of the six corporates said that she decides to join BJP as gets influenced by the ideology of the BJP and Narendra Modi’s style of functioning. After its good performance in the Surat civic body elections of 2021, Arvind Kejriwal got confidence to fight December 2022 Assembly elections. Although it contested all 182 assembly seats, it managed to secure 5 seats and not a single seat from Surat.
Meanwhile, the state unit of AAP claims that its corporates are lured and threatened to join the ruling party BJP. In a video, AAP corporator Dipti Sakariya mentions that a BJP minister who is a resident of Gandhinagar invites her to his residence and tries to bribe her into joining the BJP.
“I gave an overview of the matter to our general secretary Manoj Sorathiya. The matter came out after AAP corporators joined the BJP. It is truly sad to see the manner that the BJP is using to mislead the AAP corporators into joining the BJP, ” added Sakariya.