Arvind Kejriwal outside Delhi airport
A day after he demonstrated his complete control over his Aam Aadmi Party, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal flew to Bengaluru on Thursday morning for a 10-day break. He will undergo treatment at a naturopathy farm there.
Mr Kejriwal, 46, will be treated for high blood sugar and coughing, party sources said.
The AAP chief skipped a key meeting yesterday, where members of AAP's national executive voted 11-8 to remove two founder members, Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, from the party's decision-making process.
Both leaders had repeatedly criticised Mr Kejriwal in the past few days; they were voted out of AAP's Political Affairs Committee (PAC) in a six-hour meeting that saw hard negotiations till late on Wednesday evening.
The two leaders have been accused by Mr Kejriwal's loyalists of conspiring to unseat him.
Party sources said Mr Kejriwal deliberately skipped the meeting to stay away from the process of removing Mr Yadav and Mr Bhushan from the panel. "I am deeply hurt and pained by what is going on in the party... I refuse to be drawn in this ugly battle," Mr Kejriwal had tweeted on Tuesday.
Before yesterday's meeting, Mr Kejriwal had in a letter, offered to resign as party chief saying he was "overburdened with work" and would not be able to handle both that job as well as that of Chief Minister efficiently.
The party stood firmly behind him, rejecting the letter.
AAP's internal tussle comes days after the party, less than three years old, scored an emphatic victory in the Delhi assembly elections last month. AAP won 67 of the capital's 70 seats decimating national parties the BJP and the Congress.
Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia will be in charge of the Delhi government in Mr Kejriwal's absence.