Okhla MLA’s Batla reminder to AAP

NEW DELHI: A day after chief minister Arvind Kejriwal proposed an SIT on the 1984 riots, Congress MLA Mohammad Asif Khan attacked him for not doing this in the Batla House encounter case. Khan disrupted Kejriwal’s press conference on Thursday, calling him a “jhootistaan radio”, alleging that Kejriwal had retracted from his stand on Batla House encounter.
Soon after the incident, AAP issued a statement condemning his action, calling it “highly objectionable behaviour, which is totally unbecoming of an elected representative”.The party also accused him of making a false statement. “Asif has tried to spread a lot of falsehoods today. It’s important to rebut these false allegations. Without reading the AAP manifesto, he has given statements that it promised a probe into this encounter. There is no such mention in our manifesto,” reads the statement.
The party also questioned Khan for joining Congress in August 2013 after having won the 2008 assembly election on an RJD ticket, despite the fact that Congress governments, both in Delhi and Centre, had said the encounter was genuine in high court and Supreme Court.
Khan, however, said that he would continue to raise the demand even if he is thrown out of Congress. “They used to say that Congress has been using Muslims for years, but why are they differentiating between them (Muslims and Sikhs) today? Even if I am chucked out of the party, I will not support this man as these people are cheats and liars,” he said.
Khan insisted that in Okhla assembly constituency, AAP had distributed a handbill saying that on coming to power they would set up an inquiry to probe the Batla house encounter. “He (Kejriwal) has misled the people of Okhla just as they have misled the people of the country,” he said.
Defending its stand on the encounter, AAP said the issue was never part of its manifesto. Also AAP had not come into existence till then, but it was noted lawyer and human rights activist Prashant Bhushan (now a national executive member of AAP) who had filed a petition in Delhi high court seeking an independent investigation into this encounter.
“The high court had asked National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to look into the matter. The NHRC accepted the probe report of Delhi Police’s crime branch. This was again challenged by Bhushan in Supreme Court. A three-judge bench of Supreme Court, headed by the then Chief Justice of India, KG Balakrishnan, dismissed the petition, seeking an independent/judicial inquiry into the encounter,” said the statement.