The Aam Aadmi Party’s agitation led by the Chief Minister has more to do with the party’s anger over the courage that police officers showed in refusing to follow illegal orders of Delhi’s law Minister. It’s also a good cover for the AAP regime to hide governance failures
Dear Mr Arvind Kejriwal,
I do not know if I should address you as the Chief Minister of Delhi; you took oath by the Constitution of India, and so you are one. But you have shown little respect for this Constitution and its basic premise that elected representatives of the people must combat contentious issues through the process of law and not by wreaking lawlessness.
You have come to love the term ‘anarchy’ in the belief that it has positive meaning too. Some of your over-zealous leaders have been appearing on television, reading out dictionary definitions of the word to justify the disruptive actions you have resorted to, such as by sitting on a dharna along with your colleagues to demand the suspension of police officials who dared to throw the rule book at one of your Ministers. The issue here is not the nuance of language but the brazenness of the Aam Aadmi Party. You have justified it by claiming that a vast majority of the people support your agitation. I doubt that. Mob mentality is never rational. You can collect hundreds of people, fire them up with rabble-rousing material and make them believe in things that are not just counter-productive but also patently illegal. left to their individual wisdom, these supporters of yours would have a more sensible opinion.
Even if one accepts for a moment your contention that anarchy is not bad if it seeks to challenge a rotten status quo, the question is: Are you as the Chief Minister so powerless to explore constitutional solutions to the issueIJ You came into politics because you believed that the system cannot be changed from the outside through street protests. That’s where you differed from your one-time mentor Anna Hazare. You are in politics now, an insider, and head of a Government. Yet, if you had to return to your old ways, why then did you join politicsIJ You could have remained an activist and done all that you are doing now. It doesn’t behove a Chief Minister to conduct himself in such a disgraceful manner.
You want us to believe that your protest, which incidentally has inconvenienced thousands of aam aadmis, has to do with ensuring that the rot within Delhi Police is cleaned and that Union Minister for Home Affairs Sushil Kumar Shinde is made answerable for the failures of the police in tackling law and order. There is no doubt that the public perception on the functioning of Delhi Police is far from positive. There are corrupt elements in the force, police personnel show laxity and insensitivity in many cases, they trouble the underprivileged and are considerate to the well-connected, and so on and so forth. All this needs to be fixed.
Sadly, the real purpose of your agitation is not to revamp the police. It has to do with the fact that certain police officers had the courage to challenge your law Minister who was demanding that they behave in an unlawful manner in a recent incident. Your dharna is to seek the suspension of those police officials — even without the completion of a probe that has been ordered, and even before a prima facie case has been made out against the officers. All through in your earlier incarnation as an NGO, you had been highlighting how influential people, the VIPs, have been making the police dance to their tunes. Your law Minister stands accused of exactly the same allegation, and you back him. Since we have seen on television how Mr Somnath Bharti tried to throw his weight around with the police, you cannot deny the incident. Clearly, Mr Kejriwal, you have different standards for different people and for different occasions.
One of your demands has been that Delhi Police should be accountable to the State Government and not continue to be under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. But the way to achieve this purpose is not by taking to the streets, holding up preparations for the coming Republic Day function and disrupting commuter services. You need to engage in serious discussions with the Union Government and lobby your case with the Opposition parties. You must get a resolution in the Assembly for the purpose. The matter has to be deliberated in Parliament as well. A constitutional mechanism has to be followed, but you have neither the patience nor the intent to adhere to the process of law.
The problem is that you have been quick to burn bridges with the country’s political parties whom you and your colleagues have accused of the vilest things; one of your leaders has even suggested that some Opposition leaders must be spitted upon. Another AAP leader has said that the Congress and the BJP have pimps amongst them. You yourselves have called their leaders thieves and worse. And yet, you survive on the support of one of those parties. You don’t obviously see the hypocrisy behind this.
Meanwhile, will you explain to the people how Delhi Police will reform itself merely by coming within your jurisdictionIJ Going by recent developments, I — and many like me — fear that your Ministers who believe in mob justice and kangaroo courts, will further compromise the functioning of the police. Officials will be suspended if they do not follow instructions of your Ministers to raid a house without a search warrant, and if they do not forcibly grope women who your Ministers believe are prostitutes and drug-peddlers. The truth is that you want the police to serve your Ministers and not the people.
It may be that you love to be the lone ranger in politics, but the ‘lone ranger’ has a positive connotation, which your conduct does not match up to. You came to power loaded with tremendous goodwill, though that was matched by an equal measure of scepticism from your opponents. You had the chance to prove your critics wrong, but you have blown it. This is bad enough, but what is dangerous is that you are not keen to learn anything about good governance. You want to propagate the politics of disruption which you have been cleverly marketing to the masses as being a fight for their legitimate rights.
Even as you have ratcheted up your offensive against effective governance — how else can your actions be defined — you have begun to alienate even those people who nurtured a soft corner for you, both within the media and outside. As the Press turns the heat on the AAP, your leaders have begun to lose their sense of propriety and have been directing personal and deeply distasteful barbs against any one who dares to differ with your brand of agitational politics. The same arrogance and intolerance that you have been accusing mainstream political parties of, is now being displayed by your spokespersons, party leaders and Ministers.
I do not know if there is still time for you and your Government to reform, because the damage has been done. I suspect that you want to exit governance because you are not up to the task, and because you believe that your party’s confrontationist attitude and abusive behaviour will help the AAP gain populism in the coming lok Sabha election. It is a terrible way to remain relevant in politics.