Days after he returned to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), former Kangra MP Rajan Sushant hit out at his former party, the BJP, terming it a “threat to India’s democratic set-up”.
“The BJP is destroying democracy by indulging in horse-trading under ‘Operation Lotus’,” Sushant claimed while addressing a press conference in Dharamshala on Friday.
The former five-term member of the Himachal Pradesh assembly had quit the BJP ahead of 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as an AAP candidate and later resigned to float the Hamari Party-Himachal Party.
He rejoined the AAP in the presence of Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann during their visit to the state on September 9.
Sushant said what was happening under the BJP regime was taking the country to “an Emergency-like situation of 1975”.
“If it succeeds, we would be in an East India Company rule kind of situation in the long term,” he said.
Says Congress can’t be trusted
He said that recently eight of the 11 Congress legislators in Goa joined the BJP. In 2019, 10 Congress MLAs had quit the party to join the saffron brigade.
The former MP said that the Congress has been weakened across the country and is on the verge of being finished in Himachal, too.
“So, I request the people of Himachal not to trust the Congress. Voting for Congress would be like voting for BJP because the BJP claims whosoever wins, they will form the government,” said Sushant.
“The BJP I was in is no more a party of principles but it’s a party of businessmen and corrupt,” he said.
Claims BJP, Congress in friendly match
He said the people were looking towards the AAP as the third option.
He alleged that the BJP and the Congress in Himachal Pradesh were playing a friendly match by alternating power and covering up for each other’s corruption. “If voted to power, the corrupt will be sent to jail like it’s happening in Punjab,” he added.