BJP sees AAP as challenge, launched 'Operation Jhaadu' to crush us: Arvind Kejriwal

New Delhi, May 19 (PTI) Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday claimed the BJP has launched a campaign -- "Operation Jhaadu" -- to crush the Aam Aadmi Party as the saffron party sees the AAP as a challenge.

Addressing party workers and leaders ahead of the AAP's proposed protest march to the BJP headquarters here, he said there will be bigger challenges ahead and asked the cadre to be prepared to face them.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi is worried about the rise of the AAP. The party has risen too fast. They have started 'Operation Jhaadu' to crush the party. In the coming time, our bank accounts will be frozen and we will be brought on the road since our office will also be taken away," he said.

"There will be bigger challenges ahead. Please be ready to face them. Remember one thing we faced many challenges in the past. We have the blessings of Lord Hanuman and God. We would have not survived these. Walk on the path of truth. We want to work for the society," he told them.

Kejriwal, who is out on interim bail in the excise policy case, had said on Saturday that he and other AAP leaders would go to the BJP headquarters on May 19 "so that the prime minister can send anyone he wishes to jail".

"We will peacefully march to the BJP headquarters and if the police stop us, we will sit at that spot. We will wait for half an hour and see if they arrest us. If they do not arrest us, it will be their defeat. You can send us all in jail and see for yourself if the party ends or it rises more," he said.

Recalling the period he was lodged in the Tihar Jail, Kejriwal said he read the Bhagavad Gita twice and the Ramayan once.

"The BJP is saying they will send AAP MP Raghav Chadha and Delhi ministers Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj to jail too," he said, after his aide Bibhav Kumar was arrested in connection with the alleged assault on his party's parliamentarian Swati Maliwal.

Kejriwal, who is also the AAP national convener, however, asserted that his party could not be crushed by sending its leaders to jail.

Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "playing the game" of sending AAP leaders such as Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, and Sanjay Singh to jail, he said, "I along with my MLAs and MPs would go to the BJP office at noon tomorrow so that the prime minister can send anyone he wants to jail."

"The AAP is an idea. For as many AAP leaders you jail, the country would produce leaders a hundred times more," Kejriwal said.

He claimed that the AAP's "fault" was that its government in Delhi built good schools, set up Mohalla Clinics, provided free treatment and ensured free round-the-clock power supply in the city which the BJP could not do.

Kejriwal, who was arrested in a money laundering case linked to the alleged Delhi excise policy scam, has been granted interim bail till June 1 by the Supreme Court to campaign in the Lok Sabha polls. He will have to surrender and go back to jail on June 2, a day after the last phase of polling in the general elections.