Swati Maliwal assault: How case left AAP on the back foot, gave BJP a campaign issue in slum clusters
A week ago, when Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal asked who would lead the country after Prime Minister Narendra Modi retires, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was forced to respond. A week since then, allegations of assault raised by AAP’s Rajya Sabha member Swati Maliwal against the Chief Minister’s aide Bibhav Kumar has blunted the party’s attack and forced it on the back foot.
Kejriwal, who was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court, allowing him to campaign till June 1, was in Maharashtra’s Bhiwandi on Friday, where he attacked PM Modi and the BJP for intimidating opposition leaders by putting leaders in jail in false cases and freezing Congress’s accounts.
In Delhi, the conversation in AAP continued to revolve around Maliwal’s allegations. At a press conference, the only one addressed by AAP during the day, senior AAP leader Atishi called Maliwal a ‘pawn’ in a conspiracy hatched by the BJP.
