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Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh: Mukul Tripathi wants his ticket for the national election to be returned to sender. That would be the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which Mr Tripathi joined in December last, and which he described today, unflatteringly, as running on "jugaad" (innovative but short-term fixes). He also alleged that there was "corruption" in the party.
Mr Tripathi, a former journalist, had been asked by AAP to run against union minister Salman Khurshid, who won the Farrukhabad constituency in 2009."I have returned the ticket and left the party as I am not getting any support from the organization... there is corruption in the internal organization," he told reports in Lucknow.Mr Tripathi, to drive home his point, claimed that the party's local unit had collected Rs 15 lakh during Arvind Kejriwal's visit to Farrukhabad, but spent only Rs 4-5 lakh. "I demanded that there should be an inquiry into where the rest of the amount has gone," he pointed out.The former journalist claimed that he had been deceived by the AAP's top leaders about the party's actual strength in the constituency. "When I asked, the district unit gave me a list of 1,700 followed. It had earlier claimed that it had as many as 50,000 supporters in the area," he said.
He also said that the party, headed by Mr Kejriwal, does not have the organization to take on a hefty candidate like Mr Khurshid.
Sources in AAP retaliated that the party had changed its mind about Mr Tripathi and dropped him, not the other way around, because he had shown little initiative in campaigning or connecting with local workers.
As India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh elects 80 members of Parliament. It's most crackling battle in this election is hosted by Varanasi, where Mr Kejriwal is running against Narendra Modi, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate. The Congress has yet to announce who it will place in the Varanasi ring.
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