In a far cry from the first iftar party hosted by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in 2015, the one on Monday was bereft of members of the opposition, bureaucracy and the Union government. Addressing party workers and supporters, Kejriwal said he was confident that the almighty would help his government fight all obstacles as “our intentions are right”. He also urged people to guard against “divisive elements” trying to break the society.
The sprawling lawns of the Palika Services Officers Institute were not lacking in terms of arrangements — with chairs neatly laid out, tastefully decorated enclosures, and a large vegetarian and non-vegetarian spread.
But the absence of politicians from the Congress and the BJP, representatives of the Union government, and Constitutional authorities like the Vice-President was hard to miss. The affair lasted an hour, from 7-8 pm.
AAP functionaries in the party and the government maintained they had extended invites “as per protocol”, which covers the Vice-President, Lt-Governor, Leader of Opposition, MLAs of all parties, MPs and diplomats.
Apart from ministers and MLAs, AAP leaders, including Atishi Marlena and Dilip Pandey, were present at the event. Kejriwal arrived at 7 pm with his deputy Manish Sisodia, PWD Minister Satyendar Jain and Environment Minister Imran Hussain, and left around 7.30 pm after prayers.
However, no one from outside the AAP turned up. When contacted, a Raj Niwas official said L-G Anil Baijal was attending a conference of Governors and Lt-Governors at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta, who also gave the event a miss, said the government may have sent a formal invite in the form of a card. “However, the tradition is that opposition leaders are invited over calls,” he said.
Despite speculation in the days leading up to the event, no one from the Congress attended the iftar. Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken’s absence was predictable, but political circles were abuzz that the central leadership of the Congress might send a representative, keeping the evolving political equations ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in mind.
Bureaucrats, at loggerheads with ministers since the alleged assault on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash, stayed away from the event. A top official said, “These events are political in nature. Very rarely do officers show up at such functions.”
In 2015, the then L-G Najeeb Jung, former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, former vice-president Hamid Ansari, TMC’s Derek O’Brien and former Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit were among the prominent faces at the iftar.
In 2016, Jung had given the event a miss, but Ansari had turned up. The 2017 event was marked by the party’s founding member Kumar Vishwas giving it a miss, as the AAP battled a major crisis, with sacked minister Kapil Mishra levelling allegations against the top leadership.
New Delhi : The Congress effort to work together with non-BJP parties ahead of next year’s general elections is facing some headwinds from the party’s Delhi unit. Former union minister and Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken on Saturday said no Congress leader or party worker in the national capital wanted to work with Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, insisting that the popularity of AAP, which runs the city government, was on a decline.
“Congress leaders and party workers in Delhi believe that there is no reason for the party to support AAP when even people do not,” Mr Maken said at a media briefing on Saturday.
He also blamed AAP, which had its roots in an anti-corruption movement led by social activist Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal back in 2011. That movement had changed the national discourse of the country by raising a popular demand to root out corruption.
A litany of scandals, which the Congress says were based on lies and canard, chipped away at the UPA government’s credibility, creating the ground for the BJP’s Narendra Modi to move in for the kill in 2014.
If there is somebody who has given birth to “Modi naam ka Rakshas” (a monster called Modi),”then it is Mr Kejriwal after the Anna movement, Mr Maken said, in a disparaging reference to PM Modi as well.
Listing out how the AAP’s vote share had sharply declined between 2013 and 2017 by nearly 30 percentage points, Mr Maken said the Delhi Congress, which had ruled the city for 15 years, had been able to improve its vote share and should not align with the AAP that was going to face anti-incumbency due to its handling of the power and water supply situation.
The media briefing appeared as much a message to AAP and the public, as it was to his own party’s central leadership.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi is keen that his party works closely with other non-BJP parties and has already started discussions with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party for a tie up in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In Karnataka, the Congress and the Janata Dal Secular have announced that their newly-formed alliance would continue working together in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections too.
It was Arvind Kejriwal, who along with a small group of people then described as Team Anna, spread lies and canard against the Congress, the Congress leader said.
Mr Maken’s statement comes a day after AAP claimed some senior Congress leaders were in touch with the party to seek its support in Haryana, Delhi and Punjab. That the AAP had named in-charge for five Lok Sabha constituencies had also fuelled speculation that it had kept aside two seats for a possible alliance partner.
A vehicle on a downhill drive has a peculiar feature. It moves at high-speed and takes several sharp U-turns. In the last six months, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership, too, has gone on a U-turn drive, apologising to one and all, and trying to make-up with rivals, including Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
The latest is the reported ‘offer’ made by the AAP leadership to the Congress to enter into some kind of an alliance in Delhi to take on the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
This ‘offer’ comes close on the heels of former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit giving an interview to a Hindi daily saying politics was all about possibilities, and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal complementing Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken for his son’s performance in the Board examinations.
Dikshit’s interview, much to the chagrin of Maken, came on the day he was launching a weeklong agitation against the AAP government’s alleged scam in the purchase of close circuit television cameras (CCTVs). Delhi is, thus, being presented with a scenario where on the one hand Maken-led Delhi Congress has upped ante against the AAP government and on the other Kejriwal is going out of his way to build bridges.
AAP leadership’s moves have to be looked at both from the micro and macro perspectives. At the national level, Kejriwal is seeking space in the proposed 2019 anti-BJP alliance. This has presented the Congress leadership with a tricky situation as Kejriwal’s case at the central level is being pushed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Not to forget that in West Bengal, Trinamool leadership has no love lost for the local Congress leadership.
In national politics, with the Left playing the role of the lead lieutenant of the Congress, Mamata would need an aide like Kejriwal to safeguard her space in the national opposition alliance.
On the other hand, at the local level in Delhi, the benefit of the AAP-Congress alliance would be limited to those leaders of the Congress who are opposed to Maken. Kejriwal has reportedly offered such seats to the Congress which could facilitate the entry of Maken’s rivals into the Lok Sabha in 2019.
The ‘offer’ is startling as it’s not easy to forget that the rise of the AAP and Arvind Kejriwal has foundations in the anti-corruption campaign launched against the Congress regimes in Delhi and at the Centre. Having unseated Congress chief minister Sheila Dikshit from power in 2013, it’s truly ironic that Kejriwal is now reaching out to the same ‘corrupt’ Congress leader for an alliance, that too in less than five years.
What brings such change of heart? The answer probably lies in the downslide in the vote share of the AAP in Delhi ever since its peak performance in the 2015 Assembly elections. Though some analysts, and a few Congress leaders pushing for the alliance, point towards the figures of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, conveniently forgetting that much water has flowed down the Yamuna since then.
It’s true that the AAP and the Congress together have got about 47 percent votes in Delhi in last few polls, whereas the vote share of the BJP since the 1998 Assembly Sabha polls has swung between 32 percent and 36 percent. It’s also true that the division of the votes between the non-BJP parties has helped the BJP score facile victories in Delhi during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2017 municipal elections.
But there is a difference between the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and 2017 municipal polls. In 2014, AAP’s vote share was 32.9 percent and Congress’ was a meagre 15.1%. In 2017 municipal elections, the AAP vote share came down to 26.21%, whereas the Congress improved its performance to touch 21.21%.
Those opposed to the alliance within the Congress further point out that performance check should be done taking into account the 2015 Assembly elections, where the AAP got a massive share of 54.3%, whereas the Congress was down in the dumps with a single digit figure of mere 9.7%.
Smelling a chance for revival, the present Delhi Congress leadership has also been crying foul over the Election Commission deciding not to appeal against the High Court order restoring the membership of the 20 AAP MLAs disqualified for holding office of profit. For the Congress leaders, it was a chance denied at restoring their political credibility after the zero-seat performance in 2015.
Of the 20 Assembly seats which could have gone to polls, in the event of High Court not intervening, 14 are former Congress strongholds with dominant presence of Dalit and Muslim votes. In the 2015 elections, the two communities travelled lock, stock and barrel from the Congress to the AAP. But thereafter, there have been indications of the two communities returning to the Congress.
If this trend is to continue, the Congress certainly stands to gain nothing much from an alliance with the AAP at the micro-level, though it could provide some amount of political chloramine to the ruling party. And at macro level, outside Delhi, as the results of various state Assembly elections and by-elections have shown, the AAP is fast moving towards extinction, including in states like Punjab where it had some presence.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court today refused to stay the trial court proceedings in a case in which it was alleged that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal gave false information to the Election Commission in his affidavit in the run up to the 2013 assembly polls.
Justice AK Pathak said the interim relief of exemption from personal appearance to Mr Kejriwal before the trial court will continue till the next date and listed the matter for further hearing on July 30.
When the AAP leader’s counsel sought a stay on the trial court proceedings claiming there was a defect in the summoning order and notice could be framed on Mr Kejriwal, the judge said he was not inclined to stay the lower court’s proceedings in the complaint case.
The trial court had issued summons to Mr Kejriwal in February 2016 on a criminal complaint filed by Neeraj Saxena and Anuj Agarwal on behalf of an NGO, noting that the Chief Minister had prima facie “willfully concealed” and “suppressed” details regarding his assets and income.
The trial court had on December 24, 2016 granted bail to Mr Kejriwal.
The high court had on May 29 last year issued notice and sought the response of the complainants in the matter. Mr Saxena and Mr Agarwal have already filed their replies.
Earlier, the NGO had approached Delhi High Court with a plea seeking quashing of Mr Kejriwal’s nomination papers on the ground of “illegalities” in his affidavit. But the High Court had refused to entertain the petition and directed the petitioners to approach a magisterial court.
The NGO, in its plea in the high court, had alleged that Mr Kejriwal had violated the provisions of the Representation of the People (RP) Act by submitting an affidavit which had incorrect details of his assets and income at the time of filing the nomination.
The offence under section 125-A of the Act entails a punishment of six months jail term or fine or both.
The complaint was filed under several sections of the RP Act and the IPC for the alleged offences committed by him before holding the office of the Chief Minister of Delhi.
The complaint alleged that Mr Kejriwal falsely gave his Delhi address so as to qualify for contesting the polls in the capital though he lived in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. This prima facie amounted to wilful concealment, suppression and furnishing of false information, it was claimed.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia visited the city’s CBSE Class 12 examination toppers today.
The chief minister later told reporters that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government was “investing” in the children for the “country’s future”.
His government had doubled the budget for the education sector in its first year, the AAP supremo said, adding that it was an “investment, not an expenditure”.
Mr Kejriwal and Mr Sisodia, who is also the education minister of Delhi, paid a visit to the CBSE Class 12 toppers – Bharti Raghav, Prince Kumar, the son of a DTC bus driver, Prachi Prakash and Chitra Kaushik at their respective residences.
They also visited an orphanage in Daryaganj to meet Shahnaz, who has topped the exam in the vocational stream.
“In the last few years, there has been a makeover of the government schools…the same education is being imparted in private and government schools now…we had increased the education budget from Rs. 5,000 crore to Rs. 10,000 crore after our government was formed.
“It is like an investment, not an expenditure. We are investing in our children. We are investing for the country’s future and we are getting to see the results,” Mr Kejriwal told reporters, adding that the AAP government was committed to supporting students.
In the CBSE Class 12 examination, Delhi’s pass percentage was 89. Girls, with a pass percentage of 93.19, outperformed the boys (84.93) in the Delhi region.
Last year, the city’s pass percentage was 88.37.
According to a government official, Kumar topped the science stream with a 97-per cent score, while Kaushik, with 95.6 per cent marks, was the topper in the humanities stream and Raghav and Prakash jointly topped the commerce stream.
The pass percentage of the government-aided schools in Delhi was 82.79 this year as against the 80.32 in 2017.
The pass percentage of the private schools was 88.35 this year as compared to last year’s 84.20.
NEW DELHI: Rebel AAP member Kumar Vishwas on Monday withdrew all allegations against finance minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi high court and apologised by way of a letter laced with sarcasm against chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw disposed of the Rs 10 crore defamation suit after Jaitley’s counsel said it was acceptable.
Vishwas said in his letter that he blindly trusted Kejriwal on the corruption charges since he is AAP’s leader. He also alleged that Kejriwal apologised because he couldn’t risk being removed as CM in order to serve a brief jail term for criminal defamation. “The legal experts told Kejriwal that if his allegations turn out to be false, he might have to go to jail and in that case, he will have to quit as CM and offer his post to deputy CM Manish Sisodia. In such a situation Manish would not leave the CM’s post after Kejriwal comes out of jail,” Vishwas wrote.
“Arvind used to show us papers saying he had collected the same as proof against various leaders. Like any other party workers, we trusted him. When a leader takes a stand after a public statement, the workers repeat his words. We too, without questioning, trusted our leader’s illogical words,” the letter read.
Vishwas was the only one against whom Jaitley’s suit remained as Kejriwal and four other AAP leaders—Raghav Chadha, Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh and Deepak Bajpai—had previously apologised to Jaitley. On April 3, HC had accepted a joint application made by Kejriwal and AAP leaders to seek withdrawal of a civil defamation case filed by Jaitley against them.
Vishwas had earlier told the court that before tendering any apology to Jaitley, he wanted to know if Kejriwal lied. Vishwas claimed that AAP didn’t provide him documents or shared crucial information about the case. “The party has removed a lawyer who agreed to fight my case,” Vishwas said.
Countering his charges, AAP said Vishwas was trying to target Kejriwal after being denied a Rajya Sabha ticket. “Almost 10,000 pages of documentary evidence related to DDCA were filed by AAP functionaries in HC. Vishwas knew about it and can obtain it easily from there and pursue the case if he wishes to,” AAP Delhi chief spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj said.
Vishwas said he wasn’t consulted before Kejriwal decided to apologise, and the apology was like a commander running away from the battlefield while putting his soldiers in harm’s way. “The metamorphosis of Kejriwal who fought for Swaraj into a flea sticking to the chair is surprising and unimagined even by his rivals,” Vishwas said.
New Delhi: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia visited the city’s CBSE Class 12 examination toppers on Tuesday.
The chief minister later told reporters that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government was “investing” in the children for the “country’s future”.
His government had doubled the budget for the education sector in its first year, the AAP supremo said, adding that it was an “investment, not an expenditure”.
Kejriwal and Sisodia, who is also the education minister of Delhi, paid a visit to the CBSE Class 12 toppers – Bharti Raghav, Prince Kumar, the son of a DTC bus driver, Prachi Prakash and Chitra Kaushik – at their respective residences.
They also visited an orphanage in Daryaganj to meet Shahnaz, who has topped the exam in the vocational stream.
“In the last few years, there has been a makeover of the government schools… the same education is being imparted in private and government schools now… we had increased the education budget from Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore after our government was formed.
“It is like an investment, not an expenditure. We are investing in our children. We are investing for the country’s future and we are getting to see the results,” Kejriwal told reporters, adding that the AAP government was committed to supporting students.
In the CBSE Class 12 examination, Delhi’s pass percentage was 89. Girls, with a pass percentage of 93.19, outperformed the boys (84.93) in the Delhi region.
Last year, the city’s pass percentage was 88.37.
According to a government official, Kumar topped the science stream with a 97 percent score, while Kaushik, with 95.6 percent marks, was the topper in the humanities stream and Raghav and Prakash jointly topped the commerce stream.
The pass percentage of the government-aided schools in Delhi was 82.79 this year as against the 80.32 in 2017.
The pass percentage of the private schools was 88.35 this year as compared to last year’s 84.20.
New Delhi: Images of Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi hugging each other and waving flooded TV screens on Wednesday. Akhilesh Yadav, till recently a bitter foe of Mayawati, stood shoulder to shoulder with her all smiles.
In this, HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing in ceremony in Bengaluru on Wednesday was bigger than the sum of its parts. It pointed to a united anti-BJP opposition front that seems to be taking shape ahead of 2019.
But one man seemed to stay aloof – Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Kejriwal was somewhat of a political pariah until recently. That changed this week when he received a phone call from Karnataka’s chief minister designate HD Kumaraswamy. The Janata Dal (Secular) state chief invited the Delhi chief minister for his swearing-in.
This is the second time he flew down South. He had also attended the launch of his friend Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam in Madurai in February.
His only other “friend” seems to be West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. During Wednesday’s swearing in, Kejriwal was aloof, posing for cameras for only a short while and then sliding back into the shadows.
When Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi came on stage to pose for the “money shot”, Kejriwal was absent.
And yet, the Aam Aadmi Party seems keen to shrug off the pariah tag. The AAP on Tuesday evening officially declared its support to for the joint opposition candidates in the upcoming Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpur Vidhan Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Last year, they had done the same and supported opposition candidate Meira Kumar in the 2017 Presidential Election.
“The Aam Aadmi Party has decided to support the RLD candidate in the Kairana Lok Sabha bypoll and the SP candidate in the Noorpur Assembly bypoll,” AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP and UP unit chief Sanjay Singh said.
CHANDIGARH: Delhi chief minister and national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party, Arvind Kejriwal, on Sunday launched Mission 2019 from Kurukshetra and claimed that the AAP was the only alternative for a transparent and progressive government in Haryana.
Kejriwal announced that the AAP would contest all the 10 parliamentary constituencies as well 90 assembly seats in the state. He asked the volunteers to work with the masses and apprise them about the success of the Delhi model of development.
The Delhi CM was in Kurukshetra to chair the day-long training session of AAP volunteers. Accompanied by AAP Haryana in charge Navin Jaihind, and other senior leaders, he had interaction with the heads and office-bearers of frontal units of the party.
While formally launching the mission, Kejriwal compared the Delhi’s education system and electricity rates with that of Haryana.
“If Delhi can supply electricity at lower rates then what stops Haryana from correcting the electricity tariff. Similarly, we need to seriously work on the education system of the state,” he said.
All parties, the Congress, the INLD and the BJP have divided the state and misled public for personal and political gains, he alleged, adding it was time for people to turn to the AAP.
AAP Haryana in charge said for the first two months, the volunteers would elaborate upon the achievements of the Delhi government and then start making efforts to get people involved with the party.
Delhi minister Gopal Rai talked about the party’s Haryana Jodo plan while Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Gupta and other leaders spoke about the skills needed to reach out to the electorate.
NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today attacked Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal for “creating obstacles”, after the latter congratulated teachers and students of government-run schools in the national capital on their good performance in CBSE Class 12 examinations.
On Twitter, Kejriwal sought to know from Baijal who had benefitted when the Centre removed Atishi Marlena, advisor to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, from the post in April.
Marlena was among the nine advisors to Delhi ministers whose appointments were cancelled following a Union Home Ministry directive that said these posts were “not sanctioned”
“So You agree that Delhi govt doing great work in education? Who benefitted when you removed Atishi Marlena? If you stop creating obstacles, wonders could be achieved in many sectors. It will make you also proud. Please support our efforts. Lets be positve. Please don’t create hurdles in everything,” Kejriwal tweeted
His tweet came after Baijal said on Twitter: “Heartiest congratulations to all our students of Class-XII & their parents for their outstanding performance. Sincere thanks to their teachers. Would advise to follow your dreams with sincerity, dedication & hardwork.”
The April 17 cancellation of appointments had escalated the tussle between the AAP government and the Centre.
Sisodia had then said that the Centre’s order was a “conspiracy to derail” the “education revolution” in Delhi. He had alleged that Marlena, who he said was playing a “vital role” in improving Delhi’s education system, was targeted
After CBSE results for Class 12 were declared yesterday, Sisodia said the Delhi government-run schools had a pass percentage of 90.64, against last year’s 88.27 per cent.
He said 168 government schools have achieved 100 per cent results, against the 112 schools last year.
Sisodia also said that as many as 638 government schools achieved pass percentage of 90 and above, against the 554 last year.
Kejriwal too praised the students and said the results were achieved despite many hurdles.
