Congress is stealing our ideas, manifesto: AAP

Aam Aadmi Party minister Saurabh Bharadwaj accuses Congress of stealing ideas and manifesto points, the once mocked

| Updated: 16 June, 2023 2:02 am IST
Delhi cabinet minister and AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj

NEW DELHI: India’s ‘youngest political party’, Aam Aadmi Party, is accusing India’s ‘oldest political party’, Congress, of ‘stealing’ ideas and manifesto points from their party.

AAP senior leader and Delhi cabinet minister Saurabh Bhardwaj on Thursday highlighted several instances where Congress seemingly imitated policies championed by Delhi Chief minister and party national convenor Arvind Kejriwal.

“The Congress party is the oldest national party in the country, and it has been on a decline for a while now. It has been some time now that the people of the country have been wondering what or who is responsible for the decline of this political party. They have been wondering why such an old political party and its leadership is in absolute tatters at the moment,” Bharadwaj said, taking a potshot at the Grand Old Party.

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“But what we are noticing is that there doesn’t seem to be a leadership crisis within the Congress party, but they also seem to be suffering from lack of ideas to rise from this crisis,” he added.

“The biggest example of this in the current political scenario is that now the oldest political party in the country has started to even steal ideas and the manifesto of the youngest political party in the country. I was trying to see if there is any legal way to copyright our manifesto so that others don’t end up copying ideas from it,” he added.

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Bharadwaj drew attention to Congress’s apparent hypocrisy by pointing out their criticism of AAP’s promises of free water and electricity in Delhi, only to witness Congress announcing similar guarantees in Himachal Pradesh.

“Congress ridiculed our free water-electricity guarantees in Delhi, yet they shamelessly adopted the same promises in Himachal Pradesh, along with the announcement of free electricity and a monthly allowance to women,” Bharadwaj said.

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Bhardwaj said that after mocking AAP and making fun of its manifesto, the Congress party is now word-for-word stealing the promises that AAP has made to the people and writing them down in their own manifesto.

“It was Arvind Kejriwal who, for the first time, said that most election manifestos were fake and therefore introduced the ‘Kejriwal ki guarantee’,” Bharadwaj pointed out. “Now the Congress has even gone on to steal the term ‘guarantee’ from the AAP manifesto. During the Himachal Pradesh elections, the Congress used the term ‘guarantee’ instead of manifesto,” he added.

The Delhi Cabinet Minister said that when AAP, for the first time in its manifesto, mentioned that it would provide electricity up to 200 units free of cost and up to 400 units for half the price, the Congress party made fun of the guarantee and protested against it.

“When for the first time in our manifesto we mentioned that we would make ‘bijli half, paani maaf’, the leaders of the Congress party, including Ajay Maken, made fun of our promise to the people and said that AAP does not know how to do politics,” Bharadwaj said.

“He went on to say that this cannot be done and that the AAP was lying to the people to get their votes. Ajay Maken said that these people (AAP) do not know how to do politics and the Congress party has been in politics for decades, so we know that all of this cannot be made possible. The video of Ajay Maken saying this is still available on the Internet,” he added.

The senior AAP leader pointed out that it was the same case with the free travel scheme for women in the state. “They first mocked us and then went on to implement the same scheme in Himachal Pradesh. Now in Karnataka, they have implemented the same scheme – although they have put up several conditions for the women travellers,” he said.

Bharadwaj further said that the Congress party seems to be disconnected from the people on the ground and that they seem to have no way to even find out what the citizens on the ground want from them.

Meanwhile, AAP chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar accused the Congress government in Karnataka of withholding funds for vital infrastructure projects in order to fulfil their own electoral promises.

Kakkar also applauded CM Kejriwal’s ability to deliver a profitable budget for Delhi despite providing numerous free facilities to the people.

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