The general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Delhi unit, Ravinder Gupta, on Tuesday filed a police complaint against four Aam Aadmi Party MLAs after a meeting between the two parties on the ongoing sealing drive in Delhi ended in chaos, the Hindustan Times reported.

“We had an appointment with the CM [Arvind Kejriwal],” Gupta wrote in his complaint filed at the Civil Lines police station. “But after we reached, AAP MLAs Jitender Tomar, Sanjeev Jha, Jarnail Singh, Akhilesh Tripathi and others started heckling and abusing us.”

The Delhi civic body’s action against restaurants and shops across the city for alleged unauthorised constructions since December is the latest flash point between the AAP and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which controls three municipal corporations in Delhi.

Acting on instructions from a Supreme Court-appointed committee, civic officials had shut down shops and restaurants in south Delhi’s Defence Colony Market on December 22 for alleged unauthorised constructions.

The civic body has since taken action against shops in 20 markets, including Khan Market, Mehar Chand Market, Sundar Nagar, Hauz Khas, Rajendra Nagar, Chhatarpur and Vasant Kunj. Traders and the ruling AAP have been protesting against the move.

BJP walkout

AAP chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met BJP leaders at his house to find a solution to the problem, The Times of India reported. However, this ended with the BJP delegation walking out of the chief minister’s house.

Kejriwal announced that the government would approach the Supreme Court asking for a temporary ban on the sealing drive, The Indian Express reported. The AAP chief claimed that the BJP refused to discuss the matter with him.

The BJP’s Delhi unit president Manoj Tiwari, however, said the delegation had walked out because the AAP government wanted to “divert” the issue.

“The AAP had over 150 supporters at the meeting,” IANS quoted Tiwari as saying. “We wanted a meeting in a closed room. They misbehaved with our women mayors and our MLA Vijender Gupta and disrupted the meeting. This is is highly condemnable.”

BJP leader and Rohini MLA Vijender Gupta alleged that Kejriwal refused to meet the delegation and that some people outside his home assaulted and hurt him.

Kejriwal responded saying he made a “sincere request” to the BJP to sit and talk about the issue. “But they just walked out,” he said on Twitter. Kejriwal said his party has already drafted a petition, which is being scrutinised by government lawyers.

Later in the afternoon, the chief minister visited a number of markets where the sealing drive had been carried out.

At the Hudson Lane market, he talked to traders, and said that the AAP government had written to Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal on the matter a number of times and had tried to meet him. Kejriwal claimed that Baijal and the Centre can stop the sealing drive within a day if they want to do it. AAP volunteers later distributed copies of Kejriwal’s letter to Baijal.