MANGALORE: Internal bickering, sense of frustration has left wide chasms in Dakshina Kannada district unit of Aam Aadmi Party. This manifested itself with founding members including Robert Rosario, founder convener, S Nandagopal, founder co-convener, Dharmendra, convener, Ajay Kumar, founder joint secretary, Krishnamurthy, and Ismail, founder members prominent among those who resigned from their primary membership on Saturday.
Announcing their resignations, Nandagopal said repeated plaints to the state and national leadership of the party on state of affairs in district unit of the party went largely unheeded. "It is in such circumstances that the founding members out of sense of frustration have decided to quit the party," he said, adding the party leadership failed to uphold the values of swaraj, transparency and its zest to be a leader in taking on graft and corruption.
Disintegration of the party at district level began when Lok Sabha candidate was announced without any consultation at the ground level, exhibiting total lack of internal democracy. Things became worse every following day as the candidate M R Vasudeva utterly failed in taking genuine party workers into confidence. "Functioning of AAP went off track totally and we felt there is no point in our continuing in the party fold," Nandagopal said.
Letters written to national convener Arvind Kejriwal on the happenings in the district, copies of which was marked to all leaders concerned in the state and national level went ignored. Noting that the letter was ready on April 17, the day polling to DK Lok Sabha constituency was held; Nandagopal said letter was formally sent to the leadership a month later to ensure it received their undivided attention. "But this too did not have any effect," he said.
Acknowledging that Robert had voiced the concerns over happenings in the party openly, Nandagopal said the same was also discussed internally and also with the state and national leadership, to no avail. Asserting that they had not burnt bridges with the party as yet, Nandagopal said all those who have submitted their resignations are still not averse to rejoining the party provided the basic tenets on which the party was founded, is met.
Nandagopal at the same time also demanded that the party make public the entire source of income and expenses that the party incurred on Vasudeva. "The expenditure as shown in the ECI website is not clear on many aspects of income-expenditure given that well-wishers had donated many a service at their cost," he said, adding it will also be prudent that the party undertakes a similar exercise for all the 423 candidates who contested the LS polls.