New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) increased its attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday by launching a poster campaign that criticised the leader and questioned why some of the posters it had placed outside its Delhi party headquarters had been taken down.
“It has become a crime to ask if the prime minister of the country should be educated… A police sub-inspector arrives soon after the posters were put up and removes the posters. It means that the PM and the entire BJP want to say that the country’s PM should be uneducated,” senior AAP leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh said in a video statement.
Singh was referring to Hindi posters that had appeared in some areas of the capital and questioned, "Should India have an educated prime minister?" The AAP leader urged people to launch a comparable campaign on social media and elsewhere as he concluded his statement.
The controversy occurs at the same time that the AAP is preparing to step up its "Modi Hatao, Desh Bachao" campaign, which was launched in the nation's capital of Delhi on March 22. According to Delhi AAP leader and environment minister Gopal Rai, posters bearing this statement have been printed and distributed throughout the nation in 11 different languages.
The Delhi Police reported filing 185 cases and arresting 6 people while they were distributing the posters to AAP offices when the poster campaign's soft launch was held on March 22.
“A hundred years ago, even the British did not arrest anyone for putting up posters against them. Who knew a PM would come and get 138 FIRs registered in 24 hours for putting up posters against him. Six poor people have been arrested. Why is Modi so afraid?,” Kejriwal said at an event on March 23. The six individuals who were detained were, in fact, released on bail within a short period of time.
Harish Khurana, a spokesman for the Delhi BJP, criticised AAP for the new poster campaign and claimed that it was the beginning of yet another defamation campaign against Prime Minister Modi. It will backfire, claimed Khurana.
“The AAP’s misinformation campaign only helps PM’s popularity grow. The people of the country are watching the abuses AAP leaders are hurling at the PM, and they will give their reply at the right time,” Khurana said.
“The people of this country are not going to tolerate their PM being called uneducated. I can guarantee that AAP is not going to win even a single of the seven Delhi seats in the (2024) Lok Sabha polls,” Khurana said.