AAP continues to grapple with fallouts of rebels' expulsion from party

NEW DELHI: AAP on Tuesday continued to grapple with the fallout of its decision on the previous night to expel rebel leaders Prashant Bhushan, Anand Kumar, Ajit Jha and Yogendra Yadav, even as it sought to shift the spotlight to Arvind Kejriwal's protest march on Wednesday against the proposed land aquisition law, his first face-off with the centre in his second stint as chief minister.

Prashant and Shanti Bhushan launched a joint attack on AAP convenor Kejriwal while speaking with some news channels on Tuesday morning. Prashant termed AAP a "Khap panchayat controlled by a small coterie and a dictator" which has "shattered dreams of a movement", when his father asked rhetorically when he was going to removed. Yadav, on his part, tweeted, "Still waiting for order of expulsion. If it was indeed a disciplinary committee, the least one expects is an order that states its grounds."

At the party's official conference at noon, AAP leaders Sanjay Singh and Kumar Vishwas focused on Kejriwal's protests against land acquisition ordinance brought by the Centre in the Lok Sabha on Monday.

AAP's Delhi Dialogue Commission V-P Ashish Khetan, in response to Bhushan's allegation that he had indulged in paid news, said, "I will leave public life if charges of my having taken even a paisa are proven." Khetan, an ex-journalist, questioned the manner in which Bhushans have "amassed wealth". He alleged if the money was earned through public interest litigations, then "they are running a PIL industry. It is the country's most profitable one".