AAP launches ‘washing machine’ campaign
In order to highlight its oft-repeated charge that the ruling BJP is using central agencies to pressurise Opposition leaders to join the party and even the `tainted’ leaders become ‘clean’ on joining it, while those resisting the move end up behind bars, the Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday launched a unique ''Washing Machine Ka Kaala Jaadu'' (the black magic of washing machine) campaign.
At the launch of the campaign at the party headquarters here, AAP Delhi state convener Gopal Rai said “the BJP claims that it is fighting the elections against corruption, but we will tell people about the truth behind these claims”. The AAP leaders have often claimed that cases have also been foisted against their leaders because they refused to join the BJP.
Even Delhi chief minister and party convener Arvind Kejriwal had made the charge prior to his arrest in the Delhi liquor policy case. He had then stated that party leaders like former deputy CM Manish Sisodia, former minister Satyendra Jain and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh were also arrested because they refused to join the BJP.
As part of the ‘washing machine’ centric campaign, the AAP targeted the BJP by accusing it of inducting leaders like
Ajit Pawar, Ashok Chavan and Himanta Biswa Sarma who were facing corruption charges.
Rai said the saffron party had itself run a campaign for over six months to claim that Sarma was involved in the Saradha scam. Yet, he said, “he was inducted in the BJP and all the sins of his past were washed away.”
Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj then with the help of some volunteers demonstrated how this ‘Moti’ washing machine, on which a caricature of Modi was pasted, functioned.
Dramatizing the ‘cleansing’ process, Bharadwaj sent some volunteers wearing stained white T-shirts with the names of various political leaders into a tent on which the word `Moti’ washing machine was emblazoned. The party then played audio of the charges that the BJP leaders had levelled against these “tainted” leaders. And then these politicians emerged from the tents in clean saffron t-shirts, indicating that their joining the BJP had rid them of the ‘stain’.