'Today's rulers worse than the British': Kejriwal attacks BJP
New Delhi, Mar 23 (PTI): AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday accused the BJP of disregarding the legacy of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh and social reformer Bhimrao Ambedkar.
The former Delhi chief minister also said "today's rulers are worse than the British", taking a dig at the ruling BJP.
Kejriwal was speaking at the AAP's 'Ek Shaam Shaheedon Ke Naam' event here, his first public appearance in Delhi after losing the assembly polls in the national capital.
He said his party entered politics to fulfil the dreams of Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar, and not for power.
Senior AAP leader Gopal Rai likened his party's recent electoral loss in Delhi to the way Abhimanyu was trapped and deceived in the "Chakravyuh" (maze) in the Mahabharata. He asserted that just as Abhimanyu fought valiantly, the AAP too would rise again with greater strength.
The event was organised at the AAP headquarters to pay tributes to freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev to commemorate Shaheedi Diwas.
Senior AAP leaders, including Manish Sisodia, MP Sanjay Singh, Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Atishi, party's Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj, Gopal Rai, MLAs, councillors, and other party workers attended the event.
Addressing the event, Kejriwal said, "Our role models are Babasaheb Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh. Bhagat Singh used to say that merely removing the British was not enough, the structure of society had to change. Otherwise, brown rulers would replace the British."
"This is exactly what has happened and today's rulers are worse than the British," Kejriwal added.
Within 48 hours of assuming power in Delhi, the BJP removed portraits of Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar from government offices, the AAP supremo claimed, adding that while the Congress had earlier condemned the installation of their portraits, it remained silent when the BJP removed them.
"I want to ask them if there is anyone who has sacrificed more for the country than Bhagat Singh," he said.
Kejriwal said even during the British rule, Bhagat Singh was allowed to write letters from jail, recounting how, when he (Kejriwal) wrote a letter to the lieutenant governor while in prison, he was issued a show-cause notice.
Criticising the BJP government for allegedly restricting the free bus ride scheme for women in Delhi, Kejriwal said conductors are now denying free pink tickets to women unless they download an app.
"Why are they doing this? Instead of improving facilities, they are withdrawing the existing ones. By now, they should have started giving Rs 2,500 to women, but they have not," he said, accusing the BJP of failing to fulfil its poll promises.
He also questioned why Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had assured that existing welfare schemes would not be discontinued, had allowed such restrictions to be placed on women's free travel.
"When history of this era is written, it will state that only AAP fought and resisted these cruel rulers," Kejriwal said.
AAP Delhi unit chief Bharadwaj compared the party's recent electoral loss to the process of purifying gold in a furnace.
"When a goldsmith melts gold, he determines how much of it is actual gold and how much is brass. After this election, the gold has come to us, and the brass has moved away. Those who are 24-carat gold stand with AAP and Arvind Kejriwal," Bharadwaj said, asserting that the party remains strong despite challenges.
Senior AAP leader Gopal Rai said that the party was born out of struggle and would continue its mission across the country. He drew a parallel between AAP's current situation and the fate of Abhimanyu in the Mahabharata.
"They tried to trap and destroy Abhimanyu (Kejriwal), but he is alive and will return with full strength. The strength of this Abhimanyu comes from martyrs like Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev, who fought against British tyranny," Rai said.
"Delhiites have given AAP 43 per cent of the votes polled in the election. We will take to the streets to fight for their rights," he added.
The AAP lost to the BJP in the national capital after ruling for over 10 years in the assembly elections concluded last month. The BJP won 48 out of 70 seats leaving the AAP with 22 seats.
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Oath-taking ceremony of first BJP govt in Bengal on May 9; Modi, Shah likely to attend
Kolkata (PTI): The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
