AAP leaders protest after party leader assaulted in Surat

A day after the brutal assault on the party's state general secretary Manoj Sorathiya in Surat, the Aam Aadmi Party on Wednesday escalated its attack on the BJP by dispatching its top leaders including Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha to Surat to take stock of the situation.

Soon after landing at Surat airport, Chadha blamed BJP behind the attack and said that the ruling party is "shivering" due to the rising popularity of AAP and Arvind Kejriwal ahead of the upcoming 2022 Assembly polls. Earlier in the day, he had tweeted that he was coming to Surat to meet Sorathiya.

Chadha visited Sorathiya at the hospital in front of media persons. He later said, "The whole country knows where there is hooliganism, there is BJP. Our general secretary was mercilessly attacked by the BJP workers. The political angle behind this attack is that the BJP is seeing the end of its 27 years of its rule and the party is shivering due to the rising popularity of AAP and Kejriwal."

The AAP workers also held a protest "akrosh" in Surat near its office where Ganesh Chaturthi was also being celebrated. The AAP leaders have set up pandals with a statue of Lord Ganesh holding a tricolour, flanked by statues of men and women holding placards which read "Shikshit (educated) Gujarat" and "Swasthya (healthy) Gujarat."

It was close to this pandal where a clash erupted between AAP and BJP workers on Tuesday night. AAP has claimed in the FIR that BJP workers led by Dinesh Desai assaulted Sorathiya and other AAP workers. BJP, meanwhile, shot back with allegations that it was the workers who attacked them. A party spokesperson said that many of its workers sustained injuries. He alleged that AAP is resorting to such "tricks spread chaos."

Meanwhile, the AAP is set to launch its one-month door-to-door campaign across the state from September 1. Party chief Arvind Kejriwal is expected to participate in the campaign from September 2 during this two-day visit.