Arvind Kejriwal responds to Yogi Adityanath’s jab

Aam Aadmi party boss Arvind Kejriwal today shared a video of star BJP activist Yogi Adityanath calling him a ‘terrorist sympathizer’ during a poll in Gujarat, and presented himself as someone one that defends “development” against the BJP’s “policy of abuse”. and hooliganism”.

“If you want dirty abuse, hooliganism, corruption or dirty politics, then vote for them. If you want schools, hospitals, electricity, water, roads, then vote for them. me,” Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said in Hindi, retweeting a video his UP counterpart captioned: “This specimen of Aam Aadmi party from Delhi is actually a sympathizer of the terrorism.”

अगर गंदी गाली गलौज चाहिए, गुंडागर्दी चाहिए, भ्रष्टाचार चाहिए, गंदी राजनीति चाहिए तो इनको वोट देन. अगर स्कूल, अस्पताल, बिजली, पानी, सड़कें चाहिए तो मुझे दे दे देना। https://t.co/kNtrOR2azB

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 26, 2022

The AAP, building on its victory earlier this year in Punjab, has mounted a high-profile campaign to challenge the BJP in Gujarat where it has been in power for 27 years, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 13 years as as Chief Minister. Presenting a former TV news anchor Isudan Gadhvi, as the AAP’s chief ministerial candidate, Mr Kejriwal spent weeks in Gujarat talking about ‘development’ in addition to appealing to the main Hindutva voter of the BJP with demands such as images of Hindu gods on banknotes.

Congress, which increased its share of the vote in 2017, ran a low-key campaign — he calls it a strategy. He refuses to see the election as a three-way contest, calling the AAP “just hype”. The BJP, too, views the contest as a direct fight with Congress.

Yet the BJP pulled out all the stops and deployed its big guns, including hardline Hindutva icon Yogi Adityanath, in the campaign. And the campaign took a turn towards the BJP’s overriding appeal, with Amit Shah saying “the rioters learned a lesson in 2002”, and Yogi Adityanath, too, calling his rivals “opponents of Lord Ram”.

In the video shared by Mr Kejriwal, Yogi Adityanath said the AAP leader had ‘opposed the construction of Ram temple and even looked for evidence of the Indian Army’s surgical strike in Pakistan’ . He said corruption and terrorism are “the same thing”.