Instead of the promised work to the ever expecting Delhiites, the apology drive by the Delhi chief minister, Mr “Apology” Arvind Kejriwal has rebounded. He has cut his stature to less than 40 per cent as of now in the pole bazaar. Today, if there is an election in Delhi, AAP would be a poor third after the Congress and BJP. Being a novice in the political market, unless he improves and improvises, he is likely to meet the fate of the flamboyant Prafulla Kumar Mahanta of the ambitious Asom Gana Parishad.
Demeaning streak
What is perhaps strange is that apology that actually symbolises the inner strength of a person rather than weakness, in the case of Kejriwal, has boomeranged. Truth is that these pardons were well calculated and not not straight from the heart.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in his tweet had a dig at Kejriwal that he must prepare a common list of people from whom he wants to be pardoned with an apology letter, headed, “To whomsoever, it may concern”. This might not have happened with him, had he retained the truly honest people in AAP, who he had dumped thinking that they were truly talented and might one day usurp him of his power.
Another fact is that Kejriwal has hurt the feelings and public perception of so many people that he must truly and heartily apologise to them. However, he chose to apologise against the Goliaths only as they would have dragged him to court besides asking him to pay a huge amount as compensation as in the case of Arun Jaitley who has demanded him to pay ten crore rupees.
As a matter of fact, Kejriwal must also apologise to people like Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, this writer and many others who had sided by him taking him to be an honest, focused, poised and well-meaning public leader. However, through his obduracy, Kejriwal never constrained from his demeaning streak against his political adversaries and finally faltered. Had these defamation cases not been there, he might not have asked for a pardon. He must profusely apologise to Anshu Prakash, Delhi’s chief secretary and in fact, leave his seat if he has any conscience left.
The way Kejriwal had launched this apology spree asking Bikram Singh Majithia, Kapil Sibal, his son, Amit and Nitin Gadkari to put an end to the defamation cases against him, has put a huge question mark on his own credibility as a politician and as a people’s leader.
Saddest fallout
This will also mark the end of the activist and combative politics for a platform that rose as a pressure group against the corrupt political system in the country.
The saddest fallout of this imprudent and immature act will be that no movement seeking for honesty in the system will ever take roots as people will not trust even if a Mahatama Gandhi or a Maulana Azad comes out of their grave/samadhi. However, Arun Jaitley hasn’t pardoned Kejriwal as he thinks this is a wily act on the part of the latter to get out of the clutches of the big names with whose reputation Kejriwal has played havoc.
It was the entire team including Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh, Raghav Chaddha and a couple of others from AAP who had demeaned Jaitley.
That’s why it has been advised by the wise to think before one speaks and look before one leaps that Kejriwal never cares. Through the tantrums of the AAP and their leader, the entire populace of Delhi is just waiting and watching for the five years to pass, so that they can teach yet another calculating and ambitious politician a lesson.
Pressure group
Umpteen connoisseurs of the AAP (Aam Admi Party) have thoroughly been disappointed and disillusioned by Kejriwal’s anarchist as well as apologetic psyche since he rose as the champion of honest and accountable leadership shooting his guns over the shoulders of the so-called, Gandhi number two: Anna Hazare.
Though Sisodia claims to have worked incessantly for the beleaguered schools, hardly any concrete job has been done as the poor children’s school in the walled city of Delhi’s Qasabpura is still running in the tin sheds in the Eidgah grounds even 42 years after it was razed to the ground during the infamous 1975-76 Emergency.
Though it is in the blood of Kejriwal not to heed the right advice of the right thinking people, he does what he feels best and suffers.
Here’s a word of advice for him: If Kejriwal really wants to stay in the reckoning, he must truly apologise to the ones who had joined him five-six years ago to form a pressure group and some of whom he has shown the door stating that they were “opportunists” and wanted political placements. He can’t accuse others of the misdoing that he himself has committed.
It is time for Kejriwal to introspect and apologise with a true heart not only to the bigwigs but to all those who had trusted him and whose trust he had belied. Wake up, Mr Kejriwal!
Some labourers have claimed that the party had promised them Rs 350 and food to attend the Delhi chief minister’s Hisar rally.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said the Aam Aadmi Party would contest the Assembly elections in Haryana in 2019. Addressing a rally in Hisar town, Kejriwal said the AAP will break the record of Delhi, where it won 67 out of 70 seats in the 2015 elections.
“You have to break the record of 67 seats made by Delhi’s public,” Kejriwal told the attendees at the Haryana Bachao Rally, The Indian Express reported. The AAP convener said voters in Delhi had “thrown out” both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The AAP chief claimed that both former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda of the Congress and present Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar of the Bharatiya Janata Party were responsible for “getting riots triggered between Jats and non-Jats” during the Jat quota agitation in 2016.
“BJP is the number one party in orchestrating riots,” Kejriwal asserted. “If you want riots between Hindu and Muslims, give the BJP a contract and they will get it done in two minutes.”
“We will soon initiate the process to choose candidates for all 90 seats in Haryana,” the state’s AAP convener Naveen Jaihind later told The Indian Express. “People of the state are fed up with the politics of the CBI [the Congress, the BJP and the Indian National Lok Dal], whose leaders only promote their family members.”
Labourers claim AAP promised them money, food
Some labourers who attended Kejriwal’s rally told ANI that they had been promised Rs 350 and free food for being part of it. “We were promised Rs 350 and free lunch but we haven’t received anything so far. They say the money is stuck somewhere,” a labourer said.
However, Jaihind claimed that the BJP made some people wear AAP caps and asked them to give interviews alleging that money and food had been promised but not provided, India Today reported. “Rs 1,000 are given to people to attend Amit Shah’s rally and they still don’t go, why would anyone come to ours for Rs 300?,” he added.
NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and AAP MLAs would go to the JJ clusters and each household in the city to tell people that the government was bringing doorstep delivery of ration but the “BJP did not let it happen.” Announcing this in Delhi Assembly on Tuesday, Kejriwal attacked LG and the central government during a discussion on the budget and claimed that they were “hampering the work of the AAP government”. He singled out the LG for “not clearing” the doorstep delivery of ration.
“I called upon the LG and requested him to clear the proposal. I am very sad that despite a CM’s request the LG did not consult me before rejecting the proposal,” CM said while speaking during the discussion on the annual budget in the Assembly.
While taking on the central government on the escape of businessman Nirav Modi and the plight of traders due to sealing, Kejriwal patted the back of his own government and claimed that Delhi government has worked in three years more than what other states could not do in 70 years.
Kejriwal accused the BJP of indulging in “dirty politics” and claimed that the BJP was “stalling” the work of the AAP government by using the bureaucracy. On Monday the Speaker had said that “LG has in a letter advised that, legally, the speaker of Delhi assembly cannot admit any question on any reserved subject” and answers to a question regarding the official foreign trips undertaken by officers of Delhi government during the last 15 years were not given.
Claiming that the budget in the parliament was passed without discussion, deputy CM Manish Sisodia said that the AAP government allowed enough room to the opposition members to speak on the budget discussion.
The leader of opposition Vijender Gupta claimed that the central government has been generous in providing financial assistance to the AAP government despite the fact that the Delhi government has been regularly cursing the central government.
Meanwhile, Speaker adjourned the Assembly for half an hour as a mark of protest after the home department “declined” to give a reply to a question related to the constitution of thana (police station) level committees in the city. A question on steps taken to prevent illegal plying of buses in the city was forwarded to the question and reference committee and the question related to the constitution of thana level committee was forwarded to the privilege committee of the Assembly.
There are two ways of looking at the alleged Rs 2 crore “bribe” given to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by health minister Satyendra Jain, as claimed by his former water and culture minister Kapil Mishra. At first glance, it is difficult to describe the involved money as “bribe”, since the interaction was between a chief minister and a member of his Cabinet.
Let’s also face reality, the importance of money in running political parties. It is common knowledge that ministers, whether they are in the central or the state governments, do collect money (it’s one of their primary responsibilities) for their respective political parties. So, if the money Jain gave Kejriwal was for the Aam Admi Party’s (AAP) functioning, it cannot be called a “bribe”, provided of course that Kejriwal duly deposited this money to AAP’s coffers. Whether or not Kejriwal actually did so is a matter of investigation, but that is a different matter.
But it would be considered a bribe if the money was received by Kejriwal to do Jain a favour, such as retaining the latter as minister in his government. This is again something nobody can prove until Jain himself admits to it. Therefore, Kejriwal has to get the benefit of doubt.
Upon closer scrutiny, however, things are different. The allegations reflect poorly on the state of affairs in the party; in fact, it betrays the very rationale behind the formation of AAP as a political entity. AAP became a phenomenon in Delhi only because people rebelled against established parties making politics family fiefdoms or exclusive dens where money, muscle and communalisation (be it religion or caste) play a huge role. In fact, the most positive takeaway from AAP’s victory in Delhi was that its candidates proved that one could win elections without money, muscle, and communalisation.
But this trust has been belied by the AAP over the last two years. Today, APP can hardly be distinguished from any other political party. It has resorted to age-old practices of identity politics on the basis of caste, community and religion. Its leaders have become too fond of luxuries, of palatial houses, foreign tours and the many other perks that come with the job. In fact, a senior IAS officer, who was in the Delhi government until recently, has told me that, as health minister, Jain uses over 25 official cars (both at home and at office) — a sharp contrast to his predecessor Kiran Walia (health minister in the Sheila Dikshit government) who used just two.
Kejriwal had proposed an enormous pay hike for Delhi MLAs, making them the country’s highest-paid elected representatives, drawing a salary of Rs 3.2 lakh plus various allowances. There have also been several other instances where AAP ministers, including Kejriwal, have unduly favoured their relatives in an official capacity.
But more importantly, Kejriwal hardly talks of the evils of corruption these days, even though his entry into politics was through the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement. In this task, he had attracted not only veteran social activist and crusader Anna Hazare, but also some of the brightest young men and women of India. However, against Hazare’s wishes, he formed a political party. But here again, soon after capturing power, he threw out other co-founders like Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav.
Kejriwal even campaigned in Bihar for Lalu Yadav, the first major politician in India to have been convicted of corruption and rendered ineligible to contest elections for six years. In fact, there are serious allegations that AAP distributed party tickets in Delhi and elsewhere by seeking crores of unaccounted rupees. And many of his ministers, as Kapil Mishra told the media on Sunday, are facing serious corruption charges. Ironically, Kejriwal, the crusader against corruption, has not even brought out a suitable law to have a Lokpal in Delhi so far.
How many of us have tried to bother over the implementation of Kejriwal’s 70-point agenda that was promised during the last Delhi Assembly election? What has been the progress in the fields of transport, roads and sanitation, areas which are clearly under the jurisdiction of the Delhi state government? Is there free WiFi in market places? He has kept his words on subsidies on electricity and water, arguably the cheapest in the country, but this is populist politics, unaffordable economics in the long run. In a way, cheap power and water in Delhi is nothing but a bribe to the people to give votes to AAP!
If there is anything Kejriwal has obsessed over, it is his insatiable ambition to become Prime Minister of India. But without consolidating in Delhi, AAP has been trying to expand its bases in other important states, though the party, as recent Assembly elections proved, failed miserably in this task.
Kejriwal has invariably been in the headlines for attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government. He has described Modi as “a coward and psychopath”. Kejriwal seems to reach every troubled spot in the country to carry out his “hate politics” against Modi.
Kejriwal is too talented a person to not understand that Delhi is not a full-fledged state, and that it essentially remains a Union Territory, despite having an elected chief minister a la Puducherry. For him, the issue is not simply bureaucratic or legalistic; it has serious political dimensions — in fact, it is essentially political. Therefore, one sees a discernible pattern in what Kejriwal has been focussing on ever since he became chief minister. He is simply not interested in his job as the Chief Minister of Delhi; he wants to use his present position in such a way that the country starts looking at him as a prospective prime ministerial candidate. His ultimate aim is to rule from Delhi, but not as chief minister.
Viewed thus, Kapil Mishra’s allegations against him on Sunday could not have come at a worse time. In the wake of a series of poll reversals, this bribery allegation will surely dent Kejriwal’s image considerably. After all, Mishra has done exactly what Kejriwal does — portray himself as a victim and target his rivals on the basis of unproven and non-provable charges.
Like Beppe Grillo of Italy, Kejriwal may have been hailed as a messiah by an electorate fed up with mainstream parties seen as corrupt, exploitative and incapable of good governance. But Kejriwal should realise that Grillo’s has been zero-to-hero-to-zero phenomenon.
In the aftermath of Kumar Vishwas posting his over 13-minute “We the Nation, Bold and Straight-Forward” video on YouTube and tweeting about it, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal held a meeting of National Executive at his residence.
There, his protégé Alok Agarwal argued that Vishwas, the poet-turned-politician ought to be suspended from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the contents of his video targeting Kejriwal.
A leader present at the meeting told Firstpost that Agarwal seemed to have Kejriwal’s blessing. But Vishwas challenged Agarwal’s contention and sought a vote by all those present. In that video, posted in April, Vishwas said “If, in Delhi, you form a government on the anti-corruption plank with the promise of freedom from corruption and fall silent and try to protect your own people when they come under the scanner, you will be questioned by people.”
While Kejriwal publicly gave Vishwas the thumbs up for such candid talk, a source said that privately, he was extremely upset. Agarwal is said to be extremely close to Kejriwal and happens to be the AAP’s coordinator for Madhya Pradesh.
A source revealed that when Vishwas continued with his “principled” talks with party workers, Kejriwal purportedly told him: “I will finish you but I will not turn you into a martyr”. Party leaders are familiar with Kejriwal’s temperament. Kejriwal, it should be noted, could be heard saying — when Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav were showing signs of leading a rebellion — in a leaked audio tape that the duo ought to be kicked onto their back and thrown out. But Kejriwal seems to have learnt from past mistakes and devised a new method to marginalise Vishwas and (for now) Ashutosh.
By trashing Vishwas and Ashutosh’s — the two most vocal and articulate leaders — candidature for Rajya Sabha, Kejriwal did exactly what he promised to his colleague and longtime friend: Finished Vishwas’ political career (in a manner of speaking) and put Ashutosh in cold storage.
Kejriwal instead placed his trust in two practically unknown persons, Sushil Gupta and ND Gupta, to catapult them to Upper House of Parliament. The third person who Kejriwal intends to send to Parliament is Sanjay Singh. Going by the numbers AAP has in Delhi Assembly (66 out of 70), all three candidates will be elected unopposed.
Though their names have not been officially announced, a number of senior leaders in AAP confirmed this to Firstpost. The official announcement will be made on Wednesday evening after a meeting of party’s political affairs committee, which Kejriwal will chair after his return from vacation.
What compounds the shock value is Kejriwal’s preference for the unknowns (Sushil Gupta and ND Gupta) at the cost of Vishwas and Ashutosh. “Who is Sushil Gupta? Who is ND Gupta?” is the common refrain. Party leaders are at a loss to explain what prompted their chief to select them for the coveted parliamentary post.
Little is known of Sushil and ND Gupta. Sushil threw a New Year’s party for all AAP MLAs at his residence which the Chief Minister’s Office gave the go ahead.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a prominent AAP leader said Kejriwal’s choice of names for the Rajya Sabha meant two things: “Firstly, the party has sold out. It is no longer the party which emerged out of public movement for transparency, probity and anti-corruption. It is for people to see and draw their own conclusions as to how and why Sushil Gupta and ND Gupta have been chosen over dedicated seniors who were part of the organisation since the days it was a movement. Looking at their selection, one wonders how tickets were distributed during the Punjab election.”
“Second, today a supremo culture prevails in AAP. Kejriwal never built the party the way a structured organisation is built. He calls himself a convener in a party of volunteers where everyone was equal, but he has made it one-man show. His every wish is a command for the party and his word is law. The party which was formed on ideals of democracy and claimed to offer alternative to politics as usual has been reduced to the whims and fancies of one man. It is a dictatorship.”
Who are Sushil Gupta and ND Gupta?
Sushil Gupta is a Delhi-based businessman who is worth over Rs 164 crore. He was associated with Congress. He fought 2013 Delhi Assembly election on Congress ticket from Motinagar constituency.
Despite sparing no expense, he lost that race handily and faded into oblivion. He joined the AAP a month ago, but party insiders didn’t read much into that. The media didn’t give it much space in print either.
ND Gupta is a chartered accountant. Among the AAP brass, opinions on his professional credentials is varied. It is interesting to note that his nomination to the Rajya Sabha comes at a time when the AAP is embroiled with income tax notices over fund raising allegedly done through dubious means.
Another senior party leader said Kejriwal decided about Rajya Sabha nominations before he left for his vacation. Three party leaders — Satyendra Jain and MLAs Shiv Charan Goel and Rajesh Gupta — were tasked with meeting party MLAs individually and convincing them of Sushil and ND Gupta’s worth before Kejriwal returned and held the meeting. Though there is great deal of resentment among party leaders and workers, there is no sign of an open revolt. Yet.
Vishwas who had likened himself to “Abhimanyu” of Mahabharata is angry, but is maintaining a studied silence. His supporters are, however, venting their ire against Kejriwal. “Vishwas’ stature, his popularity within and outside of the party was intolerable to Kejriwal”, one close supporter said.
Vishwas raising the red flag on party’s tilt towards pro-Khalistan elements during Punjab elections; him taking a nationalist position on Indian Army’s surgical strike across Line of Control (LoC), a stand which challenged Kejriwal’s demand for proof; and his idea that Kejriwal and team must focus on governance rather than spending all their time and energy in finding faults with Prime Minister Narendra Modi were three tipping points against Vishwas for the AAP boss.
Various incidents over the past few months: AAP national council meeting, Foundation Day public meeting and Vishwas’ supporters holding a dharna at AAP’s party office in New Delhi were indicative that the trust deficit between Kejriwal and Vishwas was fast reaching the point of no return. Vishwas, through his words and actions, portrayed himself as the only one in the party holding the torch for truth and morality.
Remember, Kejriwal and Vishwas were once close. Kejriwal’s deputy Manish Sisodia and Vishwas have been friends for the past four decades. They’ve known each other since primary school. But, as they say in politics, there are no permanent friends or enemies.
Kapil Mishra is now on a fast. He is trying to be the new Arvind Kejriwal — whatever perceived good the Delhi chief minister stood for in the past few years anyway.
He may not have the sort of following that the original Kejriwal had between 2012 and 2015 but the former minister in the Delhi government has struck the right cord with a section of people and also with a section of workers in the Aam Aadmi Party. Mishra would not be able to emerge as the new anti-graft hero unless he was to effectively finish off Kejriwal’s self-proclaimed reputation as an anti-corruption crusader. In the past four days, he has not only taken away the moral halo and incorruptible sheen of the AAP convenor, but has also put set him on silent mode.
If Kejriwal claimed that he left the lucrative job of an officer in the Income Tax Department to take a crack at public life, then Mishra can safely claim that he didn’t care for the highly-coveted post of a minister to be the people’s voice against graft in the corridors of power — whether in his own party or the government.
He came out with a sensational charge that as a minister in the government, he saw Kejriwal take Rs two crore in cash from tainted ministerial colleague Satyendra Jain. In a matter of seconds, he painted Kejriwal as yet another corrupt politician who even took a bribe from his own colleague.
In one single stroke, Mishra positioned himself as a young idealist who cared less for his ministerial position than speaking the “truth”, and waged a no-holds barred war against his onetime guru-cum-leader, whom he needed to expose and ensure that he was booked as per the relevant provisions of the law.
AAP’s politics was of symbolism. Mishra — as founder member of AAP and India Against Corruption, and an activist — had mastered the artful politics of symbolism. He thus first went to Rajghat, drew inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and vowed in name of the Father of the Nation to make the charge that stunned the nation: Kejriwal is not just making money for himself, but is a nepotist of the highest order who would make his minister swing a seven-acre Rs 50-crore farmhouse land deal for his now deceased brother-in-law SK Bansal. Jain has also been accused of clearing suspected bills worth Rs 10 crore for the same relative of Kejriwal.
It is interesting to note that despite a number of reports and leaks of investigative agency inquiries on hawala and benami land deals against Jain, he continues to be the most trusted minister for Kejriwal. Jain holds seven important portfolios — health, industries, PWD, power, home, transport and urban development. Jain’s name figures in all the charges that Mishra has made against Kejriwal. He is trying to convey why Jain remains to be so useful to Kejriwal.
The VK Shunglu Committee report had earlier pointed out how a relative of chief minister was appointed as OSD to Jain in violation of rules. The report was full of details of other instances of nepotism, favouritism and cronyism.
Mishra’s style and form in making sensational charges is almost a carbon copy of what used to be the trademark Kejriwal style.
But then there are a few differences: First, unlike Kejriwal, Mishra is not making a charge against someone high and mighty, with whom he has nothing to do — whether in working or within his domain of review. He is making a charge against his own chief minister for something he allegedly witnessed as a minister in the same government. He is making a charge against a person to whom he looked up and with whom he worked closely since the days of the Anna Hazare movement, at India Against Corruption, in AAP and his supreme boss in the Delhi government.
Next, Kejriwal had nothing to lose when he made wild charges against people in high places. Unlike Kejriwal, Mishra had a lot to lose when he made a personal corruption charge against the Delhi chief minister.
Third, unlike Kejriwal, Mishra is not making a charge and moving onto the next thing. Mishra is attempting to pursue his charge, at least as he is being seen for now, to its logical end. He is not just a complainant at the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) of the Delhi government and CBI, but is also willing to be a sarkari gawah (prosecution witness) in the charges he has made against Kejriwal and Jain. That makes this a very different from a casual allegation, which is the norm in politics.
After visiting the CBI office to formally lodge corruption complaints against Kejriwal, Mishra said, “I have registered three complaints. The first is in connection with the Rs 50-crore land deal of Kejriwal’s relative. The second is against the cash exchange of Rs two crore between Kejriwal and Jain. And the third is against five AAP leaders who misused funds for foreign trips.”
Mishra may be getting the same sort of media attention as Kejriwal used to receive, but his current style of politics or supposed crusader zeal, however, is problematic. He will be neither able to spilt AAP, nor would any other party (the BJP or Congress included) like to invite Mishra — with his outwardly fiercely moralistic independent streak — to its fold. He can be an activist, but again unlike his guru Kejriwal he can’t be a modern day politician. He had been a minister for the past years, but failed to learn the tricks of trade in politics, particularly the art of the possible.
By nominating Sushil Gupta, Narayan Das Gupta and Sanjay Singh for three Rajya Sabha seats from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has pushed his party into a crisis of credibility.
A person’s ideology, dedication to party work, oratorical skills and profile is seemingly irrelevant when being considered for something as important as being sent to Parliament on a party ticket. Instead, selection seems to hinge on extraneous factors and the whims of the party chief.
It should be noted that Kejriwal’s search for Rajya Sabha MPs on an AAP ticket began with the likes of former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and former Chief Justice of India TS Thakur and ended with Sushil Gupta, a turncoat moneybags from the Congress and ND Gupta, a chartered accountant.
The other side of the story — as narrated by Kejriwal’s deputy in the government and in the party, Manish Sisodia — is equally interesting. This is what he said at the press conference held after the parliamentary affairs committee meeting where Kejriwal put his signature and seal to the decision to send two unknowns to the Upper House of Parliament.
Sisodia said the party offered the Rajya Sabha seat to “18 big shots”. Names to be reckoned with in the fields of economics, media, judiciary, law and academics. However, they all politely refused. The reason he ascribed to their refusal to what would otherwise be an irresistible post-retirement offer to most people in that list of 18 or outside is even more noteworthy: They had earned an image after years of hard work and they wouldn’t like that to be spoiled by associating themselves with the AAP, even if it meant a berth in Parliament.
Which effectively means that the AAP has suffered a crisis of credibility. That these individuals did not want to be seen as pillion riders to Kejriwal. There were even reports that two aging BJP discards, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, were among those who refused Kejriwal. With his latest act of selecting the unknown outsiders Gupta and Gupta, Kejriwal further deepened that crisis of credibility, both without and within the party.
That the likes of Kumar Vishwas and Ashutosh, who have been associated with AAP since the days of the Anna Hazare movement, and are considered among the most articulate and outspoken in the party ranks, were dumped to accommodate two Guptas says a lot about the way Kejriwal runs his party and going forward, the way the party intends to structure itself.
The way Kejriwal has acted suggests he considers himself more like an owner of a private company than as a “convener” — as he has been designated — of a “democratic” party which originated from a public movement.
On Tuesday, Firstpost reported how Sushil Gupta and ND Gupta were nominated at the cost of Vishwas and Ashutosh. The report also detailed how, over a period of time, Kejriwal became determined to marginalise Vishwas.
Now, getting back to Sisodia’s official briefing, where he said there were 18 other names on the list, that a lot of brainstorming took place within party and that there was a view that persons from within the party should be named for the coveted Rajya Sabha seats.
So far so good. Sisodia then added that Kejriwal wanted people to be brought in from the outside for the Rajya Sabha nominations and that if the big wigs approached were unwilling, the party ought to consider other names which were not on such a pedestal, but were in sync with party ideology.
Sisodia’s statement is contradictory. Firstly, the AAP always claimed that it was a party of volunteers where everyone was equal. That it was so democratic, it would go to the people before taking any decision. The deputy chief minister did not mention who all were involved during the brainstorming sessions when the names were finalised.
Was it limited to Kejriwal and Sisodia? Or were Satyendra Jain and some other leaders also involved? From Sisodia’s statement it’s clear that the view that those within the party should be given the opportunity for a Rajya Sabha berth was overlooked and only Kejriwal’s opinion mattered.
And second, how did they suddenly discover that Sushil Gupta and ND Gupta were in sync with the AAP “ideology”? Sisodia did not reveal that. Sushil was, for long, associated with the Congress. His estimated net worth is Rs 164 crore. He fought as the Congress candidate from Motinagar during the 2013 Delhi Assembly election. Against the AAP.
Sushil resigned from the Congress last month and joined the AAP, but since he’d never been a name to reckon with in city politics, nobody cared. Sushil must have either received enlightenment akin to what Buddha received under the Bodhi tree or experienced an Albert Einstein eureka moment to realise that he embodied the AAP’s ideology, either real of professed. Remember, the AAP was borne on the plank of fighting the Congress’ corruption and misrule.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said today that he might be “stubborn” but not “violent”, breaking his silence on the alleged attack on chief secretary Anshu Prakash by his party MLAs, and asserted that all officers are “one family”.
Observing that “cowards” indulge in physical fight, the Delhi chief minister said the allegations against him that he had called Prakash for a meeting at his residence and got him thrashed at night was “baseless”.
“It’s a baseless allegation that I called him in the night at my residence and got him thrashed. I am not a fool to to do so,” Kejriwal said after meeting a delegation of Joint Council of All Employees Organisations.
“Kejriwal may be stubborn but he is not violent. Cowards indulge in physical fighting. Kejriwal is not a coward,” he stated.
The Delhi chief minister also said that he considered all officers and employees of the city government as part of one family, and added that a “conspiracy” was being hatched somewhere else against his government.
“All the officers and employees are part of our family. The conspiracy is being hatched somewhere else. We will deal with it separately and the almighty will help us in this.”
In the past 10-15 days “a lie was propagated” and an atmosphere was created by “instigating” the employees as though President’s Rule will be imposed in Delhi, he said, referring to the developments following the alleged assault on Prakash.
Kejriwal also appealed to the employees’ delegation to approach him whenever there is an issue in future.
“One-sided version creates confusion. You should hear both sides. I appeal to you to come to me whenever there is any issue,” he said.
The Joint Council in its memorandum to the chief minister said “the dialogues among the public servant at every level should be proper, decent and brotherly. All the pillars of democracy including the political executive should function within the limits of the law.”
It also demanded that all the meetings of executives, including political executives and bureaucrats, should be held in office hours except in case of emergency.
Delhi chief secretary Anshu Prakash was allegedly assaulted at Kejriwal’s residence by AAP MLAs on the intervening night of February 19-20.
Police have so far arrested two MLAs and also seized hard disk of the CCTV camera system installed at the chief minister’s official residence in its investigation in the case registered on a complaint of Prakash.
