New Delhi: Till just a few days back, the Aam Aadmi Party was standing like a wall with former law minister in its government Jitender Singh Tomar, but the support now seems to be dwindling. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and senior AAP leader Manish Sisodia has accepted that the party committed a mistake in verifying Tomar's degrees.
"We can only say that we did a mistake in verifying Tomar’s candidature. This confusion can happen with anyone. When the fake degree issue was raised, we asked him about it but he showed us his degrees, an RTI document and an affidavit to this effect. After that all that we could have done was leave our work and visit the university to verify the document (Abhi to yahi keh sakte hain ki candidature ko verify karne main galti ho gayi. Ye to kisi se bhi ho sakti hai, agar unki degree farzi hai aur hum unse pooch rahe hain, jab ye mudda uttha ki ji kya iske peeche, kya hai, kyun hai ye, to unhone humme aake ek RTI dikha di, degree dikha di, law ki degree dikha di, unhone ek affidavit dikha diya, ab uske baad to yahi raasta bachta tha ki hum saare karyakarta kaam chod ke main chala jaata university)," quips Sisodia.
He also added that all 67 MLAs in the party have given a certificate, "so prima facie we believe that they are genuine. (67 MLAs ne koi na koi certificate diya hua hai, to prima facie ab ye maan rahe hain ki sach hi hoga,)."
At the time when the issue initially cropped up, the AAP claimed that Tomar was being victimised, but the party is on the backfoot now. "We had raised a question over the timing and the manner in which the issue was highlighted. Those who are guilty should be punished, I even say that out of the 67, all those who committed a mistake should be punished (Timing aur tareeke par sawaal hai. jo galat kiya unko saja milni chahiye, main to keh raha hoon ki 67 ke 67 main se jitno ne galat kiya hai, isme koi if and but nahi hai, sabko saja milni chahiye)", he said.
He refused to comment on whether the party would have been in a better position if it legal support from ousted leaders Prashant Bhushan or Yogendra Yadav. "We can't do post mortem over what happened. It could have been better and it could not have had any results too. We did what we though was aprropriate. (Pata nahi, ab to post mortem hi kar sakte hain. Haan aur na dono ho sakta hai, main keh doonga ki haan haan bohot acha handle hua, main keh doonga ki nai nai theek hone cahhaiye tha kuch aur ho sakta tha, this is just post mortem. Us waqt par jo sabse uchit laga vahi kiya), he said.
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