The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party, the national capital’s ruling party, are conducting a sit-in in front of prime minister Narendra Modi’s residence after they were stopped from conducting a media tour of the Delhi chief minister’s official bungalow to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party’s claims of excessive spending there.
Delhi is to go to polls in less than a month, in early February.
AAP leaders including Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh are part of the sit-in. “We are being stopped by BJP’s police. The question is why they don’t want the public to see PM’s residence,” Bharadwaj was quoted by the Indian Express as having said.
Earlier today (January 8), the AAP had said that it would accompany reporters on a tour of the Delhi chief minister’s residence. This was in response to the BJP’s claims that former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal lived expensively at the address, turning it into a “den of loot” and a “sheesh mahal” after having initially said that he would live humbly. BJP has also claimed that costly fittings went missing after Kejriwal vacated the building.
AAP has countered this claim by saying that Modi leads a luxurious lifestyle and that his official residence should be called “raj mahal.”
AAP leaders were, however, stopped from entering the Delhi chief minister’s official residence today.
Police set up barricades and deployed personnel in front of the 6, Flagstaff Road bungalow, The Hindu reported.
Kejriwal was in jail for five months in connection with the Enforcement Directorate’s case over Delhi’s excise policy. He left the position after the Supreme Court granted him bail.