Activists of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday bore the brunt of the Gujarat Police and the BJP workers when they charged at them for laying siege to the saffron headquarters in Gandhinagar.
The cops and the BJP lathicharged the AAP men, rained blows on them and dragged them out of the ruling party’s Shri Kamalam headquarters.
And finally, the police filed FIRs against an AAP crowd of 500 people, including State party chief Gopal Italiya and senior journalist-turned-politician Isudan Gadhvi. BJP spokesperson Shraddha Rajput even charged Gadhvi with drunken behaviour against the party’s women members.
However, his medical reports found that Gadhvi was not under the influence of alcohol, though the police have sent his blood samples to the Forensic Science Laboratory.
The AAP, which had exposed the racket in leak of a question paper of government head clerks exam held on December 12 attended by 88,000-plus candidates, has been demanding the sacking of Gujarat Subordinate Services Selection Board (GSSSB) chairman Asit Vora.
They were not satisfied that a police investigation had been ordered into the paper leak and at least 11 people had been arrested. The AAP and the Congress have pointed to nine incidents of leak of question papers of government exams conducted by the GSSSB during the last seven years. They have been making serious allegations at Vora, who is a BJP leader and former mayor of Ahmedabad.
Meanwhile, the AAP and the Congress have alleged that the owner of the printing press, which was found involved in the racket, had connections with the BJP and the RSS.
Gujarat Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi even said a book written by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the emergency, called Sangharsh Ma Gujarat, was printed by Mudresh Purohit’s Surya Press.
Coming down heavily on the AAP, Minister of State for Home Harsh Sanghavi, said, “The AAP and the Congress are trying to extract political mileage out of the paper leak, while the government has already initiated action in it.”
Aware that the AAP members were planning to storm into the State Secretariat in Gandhinagar, the government had closed the main gates of the Sachivalaya complex.
However, the AAP members gave them a slip and stormed the BJP headquarters instead. As scores of the party workers gate-crashed into the Shri Kamalam complex, many BJP workers charged at them with sticks even as the police arrived on the scene and started driving them out.
Many AAP members sustained injuries in the milee. Some had their back bruised, while some received injuries on their head and were seen bleeding.
Meanwhile, the Congress party, which has alleged that the accused in the paper leak scam had BJP links, organised state-wide protests demanding action against “big fish involved” in it.
