AAP Ministers are behaving like street activists
If the Aam Aadmi Party's activist approach to governance in Delhi has been worrisome, its engagement and endorsement of vigilante tactics is downright dangerous. Apart from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal goading the people to conduct sting operations on corrupt Government officials, this past week saw Delhi's law Minister Somnath Bharti and his colleague Rakhi Birla order police officials to illegally enter and search private property, and worse. In the first case, Mr Bharti, accompanied by his party workers, sought to carry out a midnight raid on a Malviya Nagar residence that he believed was a den of vice. When the police refused to cooperate without following the due process of law, he harangued the officers. Moreover, he also unlawfully detained four foreign nationals including women — “Nigerians or Ugandans”, according to him — and forcibly took them to a hospital where they were cavity-searched and tested for drug abuse.
And, if this wasn't enough, Mr Bharti returned to the area the next day and urged the locals to draw up a list of houses where “such (read: black) people live” (betraying his woefully racist mindset) so that he could conduct more midnight raids. Meanwhile, in another part of the city, Ms Birla too seemed convinced that violating the law was the best way to dispense her duties as chief of the Women and Child Ministry. And so she promptly ordered the police to illegally enter a private residence where a woman had been severely burnt, allegedly in a case of dowry harassment that led to attempted murder. Here too, when the police officers refused, they were rudely accused of shielding the perpetrators.
There is much that is wrong in both these cases. First, the actions of the Ministers violate established arrest and search procedures. Either they were not aware of the law (which is hard to believe, especially in the case of Mr Bharti, who is a lawyer) or they presumed that their misplaced pro-people posturing can catapult them to instant glory. Neither offers any comfort. Second, the Ministers do not seem to understand that, while procedures may hinder their vigilantism, the rules in fact exist to protect the people's interests. Court-issued warrants are mandatory before individuals can be arrested and private homes searched so as to ensure that the police (and through it the state) does not abuse it powers.
The AAP's disdain for the system, that it considers rotten and dysfunctional, is well-known — though there is no denying that there are flaws in the functioning of state mechanisms. Yet, this is no excuse for trashing the system altogether and substituting it with one that looks eerily like a police state. Instead, if the AAP and the Government it leads in Delhi are indeed serious about fighting corruption and improving law and order, they need to undertake serious, wide-ranging reform measures. This is the hard business of good governance which takes time and thought. Unfortunately, the AAP, in a tearing hurry to at least be seen as delivering the goods, is taking the short cut. It is hardly a coincidence that both these incidents happened immediately after a Danish tourist was gang-raped in Delhi, turning the heat on Chief Minister Kejriwal, who had run down his predecessor during the December 16 gang rape case in 2012.