Anna Hazare Movement Was Propped Up By RSS-BJP: Founding Member Prashant Bhushan

Activist-lawyer and one of the founding members of the 2012 Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption (IAC) movement, Prashant Bhushan, has claimed that IAC was "propped up by BJP-RSS".

"In hindsight, there are two things that I do regret. One is not seeing that the movement was to a large extent supported and propped up by the BJP-RSS for their own political purposes to bring down the Congress government and get themselves in power," Bhushan told India Today's Rajdeep Sardesai in an interview.

India Against Corruption was started in 2011-12 after the various scams during the UPA-2's tenure made headlines almost every month. The movement led to a massive agitation with social activist Anna Hazare going on an undefined fast. He broke the fast after 13 days post the then central government's promise to introduce a more stringent Lok-Pal Bill to curb corruption.

Soon after the protest ended the differences within the movement grew which led to Hazare dissolved the IAC and Arvind Kejriwal forming the Aam Admi Party with Bhushan on his side. In 2015, he was expelled from the party along with Yogendra Yadav over alleged "anti-party activities".

"I have no doubt about it (RSS-BJP role) today. He (Anna Hazare) was also probably not aware of it, Arvind was aware of it, I have very little doubt of that. The second regret that I have is not having understood Arvind's character earlier enough. I understood it too late by which time we had actually created another Frankenstein's monster so to say," he said.

AAP spokesperson and Yadav declined to comment on Bhushan's claims. While Yadav supported the IAC from outside, he joined forces with Kejriwal in August 2012 after the AAP was launched.

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