Former law minister Shanti Bhushan in fake article row

NEW DELHI: Former law minister and founder-member of AAP Shanti Bhushan spent the better part of Friday denying that he had written an article in the daily, ‘Mail Today’ , criticizing Arvind Kejriwal for being “on course to ruin 2014 for BJP”. Finally, he filed a police complaint against the publication at Connaught Place police station.

There was, however, a twist in the tale by the evening – Mail Today editor Sandeep Bamzai publicly apologized to Bhushan , saying there had been an error on part of the paper and the article was the work of some mischievous element. “We believe that someone has played mischief. I have filed an FIR against this person. Let us not go into details of where we got hold of this article from. The publication has apologized to Bhushan,” he told TOI. AAP, meanwhile, alleged that this was yet another conspiracy to defame it. After the article appeared, there was a flurry of messages against the party on social networking sites, claiming that Bhushan had exposed the reality of the party. Bhushan has been the single largest individual donor to the party, having contributed Rs 1 crore to its campaign fund.

The article had said: “He (Kejriwal) intentionally and mischievously raised the bogey of Gadkari’s corruption and bracketed him with the Congress party’s known corrupt politicians to show his ‘secular’ credentials . BJP’s name was sullied to please a particular community . Otherwise, BJP was nowhere near power, so there was no question of them having been involved in corruption.”

The article criticized AAP’s promises on governance , saying they were too lofty. “His priority is seemingly to destabilize the political system of the country – which is well-established and needs no replacement – by discrediting political parties, particularly BJP, and stop Modi from coming to power, irrespective of the consequences for the nation. Because once Modi comes to power, his shop would be wound up, and his dreams, whatever he has, and his lofty ideas would be shattered beyond repair,” read the article.

Bhushan’s complaint to the police, asking for an FIR to be filed , said: “This article was neither written by me nor sent by me…The views in the article are completely contrary to my views. It seems someone has purposely and mischievously written this article and falsely attributed it to me, in an attempt to defame Arvind Kejriwal, AAP and myself. The newspaper in question did not check with me to verify whether the article was actually written or sent by me, before publishing the article with my name and photograph…Clearly a conspiracy involving some big political persons and the newspaper.”