It is too much for the new party to take in a single day. Dissent from four major quarters hit the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday, engaging Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to firefight all daylong.
For a party which is viewed with suspicion by political friends and foes alike and racing against time to prove its mettle at providing effective governance in the run-up to the 2014 General Elections, this was a trying and tiring day.
The unusual day began with the usual suspect in party MLA Vinod Kumar Binny. Binny accused his own party of deviating from its promises on the basis of which it was voted to power. Binny, who defeated the then health minister in the previous Congress government to win from the Laxmi Nagar constituency, said he would sit on a hunger strike if his party failed to respond to his charges.
Binny also threatened to throw a press conference on Thursday and expose the party.
That was not entirely new.
Even in December, Binny had stormed out of a meeting of party members threatening to expose the party in a press conference the following day. The day never came and he was seen praising AAP leaders within hours.
Wednesday was different though.
Within hours of Binny's statement, Kejriwal alleged the MLA had been vying for a chance to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. "There's nothing I can do about what he is saying. First, he had come for ministership, we refused. After that, he wanted to contest the Lok Sabha polls. He came to my house to ask for a ticket. The party has decided that all sitting MLAs would not be given tickets for Lok Sabha polls," the Chief Minister said.
Binny retorted to this with foul temper and called Kejriwal a liar. "It is the biggest lie if he has said that I went and spoke to him about a Lok Sabha seat or elections or an election ticket," he said.
Binny, who was with the Congress from 2009 to 2011, left the party to join the Jan Lokpal movement, before the formation of the AAP. He is now part of AAP's nine-member political affairs committee.
In another embarrassment, AAP leader Tina Sharma said AAP had begun work on its 2014 LS manifesto and was not concerned about its 2013 resolutions anymore. This was a political line that echoed Binny.
If all this was not enough, AAP's poet-leader Kumar Vishwas picked up a verbal duel with newly-inducted party member Mallika Sarabhai.
A day after Sarabhai slammed him for his comments on Modi in a 2005 video which recently resurfaced on YouTube, Vishwas hit back questioning her contribution during various protests in Delhi in the recent past.
Asking the danseuse-cum-activist to restrain from making statements against him, the satirist-turned-politician said, "Where was Mallika when I was fighting with the police after the rape of Gudiya, a minor girl, in Delhi in April? The police were beating me. Where was she when I was raising a movement against the coal scam? She should look at herself before questioning me on any issue."
In a major boost to the party in Gujarat, Sarabhai had joined AAP only last week.
By the evening, fresh trouble seemed to be brewing on another front. Captain Gopinath, who pioneered the low-cost airline idea in the country and joined AAP recently, seemed to be critical of the party's economic policies.
On the microblogging site Twitter, Gopinath criticised the party's decision to scrap FDI in retail in Delhi. "We have Indian corporates who are allowed retail outlets,so why not foreign?Bit bizarre," tweeted Gopinath.
Elsewhere in Rishikesh, AAP workers fought one another brandishing chairs for weapons at a meeting to decide on the party's Lok Sabha poll strategy. The meeting was chaired by AAP leader and strategist Sanjay Singh and former news anchor Ashutosh, who recently joined the party.
A press conference held by the two leaders following the meeting was also disrupted by protesters, who showed black flags and booed.
For a day, this was too much to take for the newest political party. While it left the party's damage-control team breathless, it also robbed a new government, trying hard to make a difference in the lives of people, of a good day's work.
On the same day, much happened on the political front elsewhere.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati blew her poll bugle in Lucknow and announced that it would be naive for political rivals to write her off.
The Congress sent feelers of its new strategy when party leader Ajay Maken tweeted party's new poster unveiling vice-president Rahul Gandhi as the party's new anti-corruption crusader. With slogan 'Rahul ji ke nau hathiyar, door karenge bhrashtachar' (Rahul has nine weapons with which he will fight corruption), the posters list three laws which the Congress-led UPA government has got passed in Parliament besides nine bills the party intends to push in the next session of Parliament.
And Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi hit out at the wrong economic policies of the UPA and asked voters to be judicious in making their choice.
All in a day's work, as some would say. Let's hope tomorrow would be another day for AAP, at least.
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