The political arena heats up as Congress voices its discontent over AAP’s Rajya Sabha nominees, branding them as elitists with an impressive average net worth of Rs 818 crore. Ajay Maken argues that AAP functions as a puppet for the BJP, orchestrated to disrupt Congress’s support in upcoming state elections.

NEW DELHI: With AAP’s seven Rajya Sabha MPs joining BJP, Congress said Arvind Kejriwal nominated members to the upper House based on their monetary muscle, claiming the average worth of the present defectors stands at Rs 818 crore.Congress treasurer Ajay Maken told a press conference that all seven who left AAP for BJP were millionaires who had never even issued a statement in favour of AAP till they were nominated to Parliament. “What kind of Aam Aadmi is this? Kejriwal should change the party’s name to ‘crorepati aadmi’,” he said.“I tried to calculate the net worth of the seven MPs, but the sum was mind boggling. So, I settled for an average. And, it crosses Rs 818 crore per MP,” Maken said.Maken claimed he always knew about RS nominations in AAP, as Sushil Gupta, who was a Congress office-bearer, had come to him in 2017 and asked to be relieved of the party membership because “he had a ‘setting’ in AAP and would be made an RS MP”.He said the mass defection to BJP has exposed the reality that BJP had created AAP as a proxy to counter Congress, which it was not able to fight till 2014. “The two best administrators seen by India were Sheila Dikshit and Manmohan Singh, and Kejriwal was used to defame them…it led BJP to come to power,” he said.Maken said AAP fights elections in states where Congress and BJP are locked in direct contests and benefits BJP by splitting votes, naming Haryana, Goa, Gujarat as some of them.“We always knew the reality but the mask has now fallen for INDIA bloc partners and we hope they will see AAP’s reality,” he said, as he underlined that Congress stitched an electoral tie-up with Kejriwal under pressure from INDIA allies.He claimed BJP is playing a dangerous game through defections as it now has 86% of MPs from Punjab while it got just 6.6% votes in the 2022 state elections. “Separatists use the claim that voice of Punjab is being suppressed. BJP’s game of usurping MPs from Punjab is only giving a handle to separatists,” he said, adding there is already a pattern in play that precedes separatism and terrorism – drugs, gang wars, criminals, that is rampant in AAP-governed Punjab now.