JOIN USFriday’s assault by a teenager is the not the first incident of violence against former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in this election season.
Kejriwal and other Aam Aadmi Party leaders have been victims of repeated attacks in several cities in which they have alleged involvement of supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party and social activist Anna Hazare.
The latest incident at south-east Delhi’s Dakshinpuri also comes a week after Kejriwal was punched by a man claiming to be a supporter of Hazare during a rally at Haryana’s Bhiwani district.
On March 28, Kejriwal was addressing a rally with AAP candidate for the Bhiwani-Mahendergarh constituency, Lalit Aggarwal, when 37-year-old Satvinder Singh pounced on him and punched him in the neck.
On March 25, unidentified people had splashed ink on Kejriwal when he was moving in an open vehicle in the streets of Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi district.
Eggs were also thrown at his car outside Kashi Vishwanath Temple. Calling him a traitor, hundreds of slogan-shouting people had blocked his cavalcade while raising slogans ‘Modi, Modi’.
Kejriwal was also attacked with ink in November 2013 by Nachiketa Walnekar, who has now joined AAP and attended a jan sabha in east Delhi’s Trilokpuri on Thursday.
At the time of the attack, Nachiketa had claimed to be the BJP General Secretary of the Ahmednagar unit in Maharashtra.
The attacks can be blamed on Kejriwal’s repeated refusal to accept ‘Z’ category security accorded to him on the directions of the Union Home Ministry.
Since December 2013, Delhi Police have offered security to Kejriwal at least thrice, but Kejriwal refuses it claiming that “God is my biggest security”.
In January, Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde had also claimed that a security cover was being provided to Kejriwal without his knowledge and despite his repeated rejection for it.
“It is the duty of any state government and the Centre to protect such VVIPs. When he (Kejriwal) was elected as the chief minister, he was immediately provided security. We are now giving him security cover without his knowledge,” the Home Minister had said.
Currently, police claimed that Kejriwal is provided security cover, but not ‘Z’ category, since he is under threat from terror groups and local elements.
“Wherever Kejriwal goes in the Capital, his PSO is always with him,” said a police officer.
Other AAP leaders who have been attacked during political events include Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas and Rajmohan Gandhi.
In January, Vishwas was shown black flags while he was heading to address a rally in Rahul Gandhi’s constituency in Amethi. Stones and eggs were also thrown at two buses ferrying AAP supporters to the rally venue.
Recently, after a scuffle between AAP and Congress workers in the Capital, local Congress workers had allegedly tried to throw ink at Gandhi. On March 7, Yadav’s face was smeared with ink when he was addressing supporters at a Women’s Day event at Jantar Mantar in the Capital.