Amid the ongoing row over the “merger” of seven AAP Rajya Sabha members with the BJP – six of them from Punjab – another AAP MP received a phone call from a person allegedly impersonating Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah. This person asked Raj Kumar Chapwal, the Lok Sabha MP from Hoshiarpur, to “meet him in Delhi next time”.
Chabwal suspected it was a prank call using Amit Shah’s name. It was learned on Friday that he had filed a complaint with the police.
“Meet me in Delhi,” the caller said.
“It was my birthday and I was receiving a lot of calls since morning,” Raj Kumar Chapwal, Lok Sabha MP from Hoshiarpur, said on Thursday.
Chabwal, who was a former congressman, said he received the call from an unknown number. The person on the other end said that Amit Shah wanted to talk to him. Then, another person came on the line, introduced himself as Amit Shah, and wished him a happy birthday.
“The call came at around 8:45 am, in which the person told me that Home Minister Amit Shah would talk to me. Then the other person (claiming to be Shah) congratulated me and asked me where I was. I told him that I was in Hoshiarpur. He also told me that when I come to Delhi, I should meet him. I said ‘okay’ and thanked him,” Chabwal said.
He said he later became suspicious because the call was not from any official government number; Official calls came mostly via landlines, not mobile phones. He said the voice of the man who introduced himself as Amit Shah did not seem to match Shah’s.
He said he left it to the police to find out whether the caller was actually Amit Shah or a scammer. There was no reaction from Shah as of Friday evening.
What’s next?
Sandeep Kumar Malik, senior inspector of Hoshiarpur police, said the police had received a complaint and an investigation was underway.
AAP has three Lok Sabha MPs out of the total 13 MPs in Punjab. The BJP has none. Besides Chhabiwal, the other two MPs of AAP LS are Malvinder Singh Kang from Anandpur Sahib and Gurmeet Singh “Meet” Haier from Sangrur.
The party is left with just one Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab after Raghav Chadha led a rebellion that led to the deaths of six from Punjab, including himself, along with Swati Maliwal from Delhi, to the BJP.
The AAP has since claimed complete unity between its MLAs, led by CM Bhagwant Mann, and the rest of the MPs, as the Punjab state elections are less than a year away now.
