New Delhi:
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who has been among the biggest critics of Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), has said that the one-year-old party managed to do what Rahul Gandhi had set out to do.
In remarks that could be controversial within his party, the Congress veteran also accepted in an interview to NDTV that the perceived battle of 2014 between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi could turn into a triangular contest with Arvind Kejriwal's party fighting the national election.
"Rahul has been saying this for the last two-three years, that people should have total access to party leaders so that we are able to take in ordinary people into the party. We haven't been able to do that because Congress is such a monolithic party,'' the Congress general secretary said.
Mr Singh, who worked closely with Rahul Gandhi in recent state elections, pointed out how the AAP campaigned door-to-door, which worked very well, but has been stopped as a practice by the BJP and Congress. When asked whether the Congress could adopt AAP's practices by 2014, he said, "It will have to."
The AAP's government will be a "case-study" to watch out for, the Congress leader said, as it would be based on 28 first-time MLAs.
On December 8, after the Congress suffered a massive defeat in state polls and was decimated in Delhi by AAP, Rahul Gandhi had said, "AAP involved a lot of non-traditional people and we will learn from that and will better it in a way you cannot imagine."
While Digvijay Singh praised AAP's spectacular political debut, he was skeptical about some of their ideas like rejecting security. "It is not up to the Chief Minister, but to the Union Home Ministry to decide the degree of security,'' he said recalling how LK Advani, as Home Minister, had offered him one of the highest levels of security when he was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. "If (Mr Kejriwal) wants to get mobbed every day, that's his wish.''