Thirteen councillors of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi resigned from the party's primary membership on Saturday, May 17. Mukesh Goel will lead a new party, the Indraprastha Vikas Party, which will be led by Mukesh Goel. All the municipal councillors who resigned have decided to join this newly formed party.
The 13 councillors who have resigned are: Hemchand Goyal, Dinesh Bhardwaj, Himani Jain, Usha Sharma, Sahib Kumar, Rakhi Kumar, Ashok Pandey, Rajesh Kumar, Anil Rana and Devendra Kumar. Party councillor Mukesh Goel said, "About 15 councillors have resigned from the primary membership of Aam Aadmi Party and formed a new party, Indraprastha Vikas Party. Despite being in power, we could not work for the service of the people of Delhi. We could not work due to internal conflicts."
Another party councillor Himani Jain told the news agency ANI, "We have formed a new party, Indraprastha Vikas Party. We have resigned from AAP. In the last 2.5 years, no work was done in the corporation which should have been done. We were in power, yet we did nothing... We have formed a new party because our ideology is to work for the development of Delhi... We will support the party which will work for the development of Delhi. So far, 15 councillors have resigned. More may join."
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In the Delhi Assembly polls held this year in February, Goel contested on an AAP ticket from Adarsh Nagar but lost. Ahead of the last Delhi municipal elections, these leaders had left Congress to join the AAP. Goel, who has served as a municipal councillor for 25 years, switched to the AAP from Congress in 2021.
This comes after the recent jolts to AAP in elections and allegations of corruption, including Liquor scam where AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and other senior leaders were jailed in the alleged money laundering cases.