‘BJP’s Operation Lotus failed miserably,’ says Arvind Kejriwal as AAP wins vote of confidence
BJP MLAs were marshalled out of the Assembly and all AAP leaders present in the House voted in favour of the motion.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday won the vote of confidence tabled by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the state Assembly.
All MLAs present in the Assembly voted in favour of the confidence motion. Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs entered the well of the House and were subsequently marshalled out of the Assembly. The MLAs then held a protest outside the Assembly and burnt an effigy of Kejriwal.
Ahead of the voting, the Delhi chief minister repeated his allegation that the BJP had offered Rs 20 crore each to its 40 MLAs to persuade them to switch sides.
“Not even one of our MLAs broke away, and the BJP’s Operation Lotus failed miserably,” he told the Assembly. Operation Lotus is a term used to refer to the BJP’s alleged attempts to orchestrate defections in Opposition parties.
Kejriwal said the BJP believed that anyone could be bought, but asserted that AAP MLAs could not be lured in such a manner.
The Delhi chief minister had tabled the confidence motion on Tuesday. “Through this, we want to show that every single AAP MLA is kattar imandar [honest],” Kejriwal had said in the Assembly then. “And that their [BJP’s] ‘Operation Lotus’ may have succeeded in other states but not in Delhi.”
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia was the first to raise allegations of poaching on August 22, days after the Central Bureau of Investigation raided his home in a case of alleged corruption in the national capital’s excise policy.
Sisodia claimed the BJP had reached out to him with an offer to drop cases against him and make him the party’s chief ministerial candidate if he switched sides.
The BJP dismissed the allegations and accused the Aam Aadmi Party of diverting attention from its government’s corruption. They have been demanding a discussion on the Central Vigilance Commission report on the construction of classrooms and excise policy in New Delhi, among other topics.
The party also claimed that the confidence motion was Kejriwal’s attempt to gain publicity, according to The Indian Express.
“You have 62 MLAs out of 70…what is the need for this motion,” Leader of Opposition Ranvir Singh Bidhuri had said in the Assembly on Tuesday. “It is a publicity stunt to hide the truth.”