The BJP on Sunday alleged that the CJP's protest at Jantar Mantar was the "pet project" of AAP to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi as it attacked former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for his alleged crude remarks in a video circulated online.
NEW DELHI — The BJP on Sunday alleged that the CJP's protest at Jantar Mantar was the "pet project" of AAP to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi as it attacked former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for his alleged crude remarks in a video circulated online.
BJP IT department head Amit Malviya claimed on X that the protest had nothing to do with education reforms or the NEET paper leak issue.
Malviya also posted the video where Kejriwal can be heard purportedly saying in Hindi, "Is baar jitne log aaye the sadkon par, wo kis liye aaye the? Wo kewal mujhe nahin lagta ki Dharmendra Pradhan ka istifa mangne aaye rahe. Matlab agar main crude bhasha mein boloon, to Modi ji ko thokne aaye the. (The people who took to the streets this time, what did they come for? I don't think they came merely to demand Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation. To use crude language, they came to take on Modi ji)."
PTI could not independently verify the authenticity of the video footage. There was no immediate reaction from the AAP or Kejriwal to the BJP's charge.
Several BJP leaders, including former president of the party's Delhi unit Virendra Sachdeva, condemned the AAP leader for his alleged remark on Modi.
In a post on X, the BJP Jammu and Kashmir unit said, "Kejriwal has finally exposed his pet project -- the Cockroach Janta Party. The agenda was never accountability or education reform. From day one, it was about one thing: targeting PM Modi."
Malviya alleged that the former Delhi chief minister has admitted that the protest at Jantar Mantar, ostensibly held in the name of students, was a sponsored political project aimed at targeting the prime minister and had nothing to do with education reforms or the NEET.
It was always evident that Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke and "his gang" had deep links with the AAP, Malviya said.
"But after the protest, the cockroaches went rogue, stopped taking Arvind's calls and forced the insecure Kejriwal to spill the beans on the true motive behind the protests," he claimed.
"Your children were used as cannon fodder for the AAP and Congress's political agenda. Never forget that. They could have been hurt, embroiled in violence, or had their lives ruined. But that didn't happen, thanks to the exemplary restraint shown by the law-enforcement agencies," the BJP leader added.
Malviya also called for exposing those who pretended to lead the protest but abandoned it at the right time to save themselves and their sponsors, "like Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal".
BJP Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal slammed Kejriwal for his remarks and claimed that students were peacefully protesting for their issues till Kejriwal decided to "hijack the movement and turn it into a political opportunity".
"Arvind Kejriwal says in an interview: 'Jo log sadak pe aaye the, wo Modi ji ko thokne aaye the.' What kind of a language is this? He is casually joking about plans to assassinate a thrice-elected prime minister of India. Does he even know what he's saying?" Maliwal said in a post on X, citing Kejriwal's remarks in the purported video.
"First he founded, funded and directed CJP, then hijacked the peaceful movement of students and tried to turn it violent as was done in Bangladesh and Nepal!... His dictatorial tendencies are out in the open, and it's clear that he can do anything to capture power. Such people are a danger to democracy!" the BJP MP added.
Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra slammed Kejriwal for using "Maoist-style language" to speak about the prime minister.
"This is not a symbol of any 'revolutionary uprising' on his part, but rather the final, desperate cry of his moral and linguistic bankruptcy," Mishra said on X.
BJP leader Virendra Sachdeva condemned Kejriwal's remarks, saying it reflected his mental state.
"He has gone crazy," the former Delhi BJP president said.
"The people of Delhi have given him a fitting reply. They have also responded to his corruption. And the way he is looting the tax money of the people of Punjab to nurture his own party, the people of Punjab will also give a fitting reply," Sachdeva told PTI Videos.