AAP will go it alone in Bihar assembly polls: Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh

Patna: Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh on Friday said his party will contest the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections independently, even as he backed INDIA bloc's allegation of voter list manipulation at the behest of the BJP.

In a free-wheeling conversation with PTI Videos here, the Rajya Sabha MP also strongly defended his party colleague and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann, who is under fire for ridiculing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visits to small countries.

The AAP leader also claimed that Modi has been given "a big signal" from RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who has said that people aged over 75 years should not remain in active public life.

"We will contest the upcoming Assembly polls alone," said AAP’s Bihar in-charge emphatically, when asked about the possibility of an alliance with INDIA bloc, of which the party was a part during last year’s Lok Sabha elections.

Singh, whose party had adjusted seats with the Congress in Delhi but refused to do the same in Punjab, added, "Look at the state of affairs in the (INDIA) coalition. Leaders like Pappu Yadav and Kanhaiya Kumar were shoved aside. What can one say of such a formation."

The allusion was to an alleged incident that took place earlier this week when a section of the media claimed that Yadav, an Independent MP who supports Congress, and Kanhaiya, the national in-charge of the party's students' wing NSUI, were prevented by security personnel from getting on to an open vehicle, atop which Rahul Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav and other key leaders of the INDIA bloc addressed the public.

Yadav has, however, since denied the media reports saying he never intended to climb atop the vehicle.

Singh, whose party has maintained that the INDIA bloc was "meant only for the Lok Sabha polls," was asked whether the opposition was aimed at "helping" the BJP, which shares power in the state, through "wrongful deletion of names of voters".

Singh replied, "Such wrongful deletions have been happening. It happened in Delhi where the BJP got thousands of names deleted. Most of the people whose names were deleted wrongfully happened to be our migrant brethren from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, but they were branded as Bangladeshi migrants".

He added, "The BJP is whining about illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Bihar, especially the Seemanchal region. But what has it been doing during the 20 years it has been in power in the state? If indeed there are illegal immigrants, on whom was the onus to drive them out?" "In the four months since BJP assumed power in Delhi, slums are being demolished rendering homeless our migrant brethren. And West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is right in alleging that migrants from her state are also being targeted", he alleged.

The AAP leader was also asked about Mann's jibe against Modi, which has drawn flak from the Ministry for External Affairs, in the first instance of its kind.

Singh said, "The BJP is very good at creating a spectacle (dramebaazi) and therefore it got the MEA to jump into the matter. In any case, Mann did not say anything that demeaned the office of the PM. Modi's visit to countries of little significance like Papua New Guinea is, indeed, bewildering. The Punjab CM was right in questioning the priorities of the PM who seems to have little time for his own country of 144 crore people".

Asked about the remark by Bhagwat that has triggered speculations that it was aimed at Modi, who turns 75 in September, the AAP leader said, "It is a very big signal (bada ishara) to the PM from his ideologue. He must step down in time and follow the example he had himself sought to set by packing off leaders like Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Sumitra Mahajan on the ground of old age".