Aam Aadmi Party on defensive on 'tainted' candidates, claims smear campaign

NEW DELHI: With fingers being pointed at some of its candidates, Aam Aadmi Party today said it will conduct probe against them if any "fact" emerges about their alleged tainted background, even as it accused its rivals of launching a smear campaign against its nominees.

"We want to make it clear if anyone comes up with even an iota of fact about them having tainted background, and not even proof, we can assure them that we would probe threadbare ourselves and if any candidate found guilty, their nomination would be cancelled immediately," AAP spokesperson Manish Sisodia said.

The Arvind Kejriwal-led party, which had made it clear that it would field candidates with a clean image and no criminal record or cases against them, has recently cancelled the nomination of its Shahdara candidate for having some police cases against him.

Keeping with its stance of zero-tolerance towards corruption, the party removed Shahdara candidate Surendra Sharma after it came to fore that there were criminal cases and FIRs pending against him.

"We can cancel any candidature even on the election day, if we come across any proof that the candidate has a tainted background," Kejriwal had said.

The party had been receiving complaints against Deshraj Raghav from Uttam Nagar for allegedly being involved in ration shop scam and Vinod Kumar Binny from Lakshmi Nagar was accused of land grabbing.

But party said that it had not come across any fact that points to their involvement in those cases and termed it a smear campaign against their "strong" candidates.

"We have received complaints against some of our candidates, Deshraj Raghav from Uttam Nagar and Vinod Kumar Binny from Lakshmi Nagar, for having a tainted background, but we haven't found any discrepancies," said a senior AAP leader.

"We have ourselves checked with the local residents about the involvement of Raghav in ration shop scam and found that all the allegations were baseless. We haven't come across any fact about him," he said, adding "we are treading cautiously".