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| Anna Hazare |
New Delhi, Nov. 5: An Anna Hazare aide today leaked the contents of a blog purportedly by the Gandhian that mentioned a plan to restructure his core committee.
“I am thinking on the lines of restructuring the core committee. I am hereby informing all the members of Team Anna,” the letter said.
Asked about the leak by Raju Parulekar, who was Hazare’s blogger, the anti-corruption crusader admitted he had thought several times about changing the core committee of India Against Corruption.
“I have thought of changing my team many times as I heard about the allegations again and again. But you cannot say anything till I announce my decision,” Hazare said, alluding to controversies surrounding three members of his team.
Team Anna member Kiran Bedi has been accused of air travel fraud and Arvind Kejriwal of diverting Hazare’s campaign money to his NGO. Lawyer Prashant Bhushan kicked up a controversy by advocating plebiscite in Kashmir.
“I used to feel that the allegations which people made against Kiran Bedi and Prashant Bhushan were true. That was why I was thinking, should I make some changes in the team.… But now I have understood that crores of rupees have been spent to tarnish our image,” Hazare said today.
Asked if he wrote that particular letter, Hazare said: “If there is my signature in the letter, then only you consider it as mine. If the signature is not there, then it’s not mine.”
The scanned letter that Parulekar released, claiming that to be the contents of the blog, ends with “Anna Hazare” written in Marathi, and is dated October 23, 2011. But Hazare generally signs as “K.B. Hazare (Anna)” in Marathi.
Hazare today said he will discontinue his blog after he reaches Ralegan Siddhi, his native village, because he suspected there was a conspiracy against him and his team.
The recent seeming flip-flops by Hazare have raised questions about his ability to strategise.
He seemed to have come under the influence of long-time associates when back to Ralegan Siddhi after his hunger strike in Delhi to pressure the government on the “Jan Lokpal bill”. He may have planned to drop Bedi and Bhushan and also stated he would not campaign against the Congress in the upcoming Assembly elections.
But a couple of days later, Hazare did a U-turn after Kejriwal and other team members convinced him that he should single out the Congress in Assembly election campaigns to put pressure for a strong Lokpal bill.
Sources in the group said Hazare was also forced to drop the idea of reconstituting the core committee when Kejriwal and the others refused to fall in line and opposed such a change.
A source said: “Hazare has done great social work but is not a great strategist. He is prone to get convinced by people who flatter him.”
Hazare’s falling out with Parulekar, a journalist, also had to do with the restructuring of the core committee. While Parulekar claims he wanted the Gandhian to make changes to the team, Hazare said he never discussed such a mater with the scribe.
Phone tap
Anna Hazare’s associate Arvind Kejriwal has alleged the phones of the core committee members were being tapped by intelligence agencies.
“We always had this hunch but had no evidence. Some incidents have occurred in the last few days, which confirm our suspicion,” he said.
According to the team members, on Thursday, Hazare’s assistants read out his note to Kejriwal which said the Gandhian would like to go to Rajghat when he came to Delhi. The aide wanted this not to be disclosed to anyone as Hazare wanted to sit there alone. “Within 15 minutes of this conversation, our office got a call from police asking us to give all details of Anna’s visit to Rajghat. We were completely shocked,” Kejriwal said.
“Is Anna and his team a threat to national security?” he asked.
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