Activists urge AAP candidate to clarify on plum projects-Deccan Herald

Activists urge AAP candidate to clarify on plum projects

Mumbai, March 2, 2014, DHNS:

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/389453/activists-urge-aap-candidate-clarify.html#

The Aam Aadmi Party’s high-profile and media savvy candidate Anjali Damania is fast getting into hot waters, with several secular farmland activists in Nagpur demanding that she come clean on allegations that several multi-crore projects partly owned by her have failed to file annual reports.

Damania, who came to the limelight after she accused BJP leader and her rival for Nagpur’s Lok Sabha constituency Nitin Gadkari of not supporting her cause in opposing a project in Raigad, has raised several eyebrows after she began telling voters: “It does not matter if you do not vote for me; but don’t vote Gadkari.”

Talking to Deccan Herald from Nagpur, farmland activist and Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti founder Kishore Tiwari said: “Such remarks have sparked off a rumour in Nagpur that Damania is carrying out an agenda for Chief Minister (Prithviraj) Chavan and BJP leader Gopinath Munde, who is an arch-rival of Gadkari within the party.

“Moreover, the AAP is likely to get a severe jolt with the kind of allegations that are floating around and gaining momentum in the Vidarbha region. Most regional dailies that have been anti-Gadkari have now turned the spotlight on the wealth and multi-crore projects backed by Damania,”he said. 

“These newspapers had always been supportive of the AAP, but Damania’s refusal to come clean has only led to more digging, not just into her financial activities but also into the antecedents and ideological leanings of other AAP candidates, whereupon it has been found that some of them are hand-in-glove with genetically modified seed manufacturing companies.”

Tiwari further argued that while most progressive and secular social activists continue to extend support to the AAP, “…The choice of candidates made by the party for the Lok Sabha polls has defeated their own agenda of promising a government of stain-free MPs”