BJP Sees AAP as Challenge, Launched 'Operation Jhadoo' to Crush Us, Claims Arvind Kejriwal

New Delhi, May 19: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday claimed the BJP has launched a campaign to crush AAP as the saffron party sees it as a challenge. He also urged party workers and leaders to be braced for even bigger challenges. AAP's march towards the BJP headquarters in the national capital was stopped midway as party leaders and workers raised slogans against the saffron party and hailed Kejriwal.

Kejriwal had on Saturday said that he and other AAP leaders would march to the BJP headquarters "so that the prime minister can send anyone he wishes to jail". The BJP is saying it will send AAP MP Raghav Chadha and Delhi ministers Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj to jail, he had claimed, hours after his aide Bibhav Kumar was arrested in connection with the "assault" on party MP Swati Maliwal. AAP later said in a statement, "We waited for half an hour on the road for the police to come and arrest us. But the BJP accepted its defeat." AAP Protest in Delhi: BJP Sees Aam Aadmi Party As Challenge, It Has Launched 'Operation Jhaadu' To Crush Us, Says Arvind Kejriwal (Watch Video)

Addressing party workers and leaders ahead of the march, Kejriwal said there will be bigger challenges ahead and asked the cadre to be prepared. "The prime minister has made up his mind to completely destroy and crush the Aam Aadmi Party, for which he has started an operation called 'Operation Jhadoo'," Kejrwail said. A 'jhadoo' or broom is AAP's election symbol.

"How did I come to know about this? There are many people who go to meet the prime minister, many of them know us too. So, after meeting him (Modi), they tell us, and almost everyone has the same version, that the first thing the prime minister talks about is that these Aam Aadmi Party people are growing very fast," Kejriwal claimed. "Before this party (AAP) grows too big and becomes a challenge for the BJP in the future, Aam Aadmi Party should be crushed here itself. Under this operation, big leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party will be arrested, they are being arrested," the Delhi chief minister claimed.

He also claimed that AAP's bank accounts would be frozen in the coming days. The Enforcement Directorate's (ED) lawyer has already given a statement in the court that AAP's bank accounts will be frozen immediately after the elections, he charged. Kejriwal, who is out on interim bail in the excise policy case, claimed that AAP will be brought "to the road" by getting it to vacate its office. The Delhi chief minister, however, asserted that AAP is "not a party of a few people, it is a party of the dreams of 140-crore people". AAP Protest at BJP HQ in Delhi: Entry and Exit at ITO Metro Station To Remain Shut Until Further Notice

People of this country have never seen such work in 75 years, he said while highlighting AAP governments' work in Delhi and Punjab. "This ideology, a government of this kind that works, can also run with such honesty. This ideology is spreading very fast in the country. And the dreams that the common man used to have about the government in this country, those dreams are now being realised," he said. Kejriwal said AAP is now an idea and asked, "You can arrest its leaders but how will you arrest this idea?"

The AAP supremo also issued a message to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "I want to tell the prime minister that you can arrest one leader but my Mother India will give birth to 100 more leaders; you can arrest one Kejriwal, she will give birth to hundreds and thousands of Kejriwal," the Delhi chief minister said. "You can try your luck." AAP has faced several allegations since it first formed the government in Delhi in 2015 but none of those have been proven to be true, Kejriwal asserted.

"Now they (BJP leaders) are saying that we were involved in a liquor scam. The public is asking them that if there was a liquor scam, where is the money, where has it gone? They are themselves saying in the Supreme Court that they have not been able to find even a single penny," he claimed. "They are saying that the liquor scam is worth Rs 100 crore, then why haven't they found even Rs 100 in the raids? Where did all the money go? They have arrested our leaders under fabricated cases," he reiterated.