Kejriwal’s fight in Delhi is taking a bad shape. While his demand may be held legitimate, his ways to meet that are absolutely not. They are crossing the lakshman rekha by crossing the constitutional limit on lies.
The agitation at Rail Bhawan is taking a bad form. The Aam Aadmi Party members are indulging into scuffle with Delhi Police personnel. There are videos of AAP members breaking barricades and pelting stones on the police despite their calming tones. The police even tried to bring in big leaders to talk to these unruly men and calm them down.
On the other hand, there are also images circulating in the media showing policemen also indulging in retaliating scuffles.
The people are getting injured and the public is facing major inconvenience. But Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his men do not care.
Supporters of Aam Aadmi Party pelted stones at cops after clash with police at their protest venue in Delhi: Reports pic.twitter.com/71uuOwYrfm
— NDTV (@ndtv) January 21, 2014
Fresh scuffle between AAP workers & Delhi police after they were blocked from heading towards Rail Bhawan #AAPDrama pic.twitter.com/1RwjIE3GZF
— TIMES NOW (@timesnow) January 21, 2014
The agitation that Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has launched may be justified by saying that the Delhi does need its policing to be under the state jurisdiction. The arguments that the AAP leaders, including chief minister Kejriwal, throw are not wrong. The state government should have the power to direct the police to govern Delhi better.
History is witness to such demand by various government constituted in Delhi. After independence, besides a brief Congress rule, Delhi was under the President’s rule. That brief Congress rule was majorly under the shadow of Pt Nehru.
When Mandan Lal Khurana took over Delhi in 1993, after the enactment of ‘Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act’, Delhi got a little more autonomy. Along with subsequent CMs, Saheb Singh Varma and Sushma Swaraj (both from BJP), noises were made to bring Delhi Police under their command but they neither had the political will nor the central government of their own party to get their way.
Came Shiela Dikshit after that for 15 years, but she used this position of Delhi Police to her advantage for escaping her responsibility over crimes and other issues.
Kejriwal government should be supported in its quest to get the control over the Delhi Police in order to fix their accountability to the elected executive rather than to a remote Sushil Kumar Shinde.
But Kejriwal’s is a government selected by democratically. There should not be any place given to anarchy. Kejriwal and his men are making it an issue of their pride and also of misconceived notions. The way they are handling or rather mishandling the situation is not right.
There is a minister who broke the law and tried to force the police to do so on his behest. Irony is that this minister is Somnath Bharti who is law minister in Delhi government. If those police officers should be suspended, the minister should also resign from his post. Also, there is a pending judicial enquiry on the four SHOs in question and Bharti has also been served from the court.
Kejriwal needs to be reminded that he is in power and his ally is centrally powerful Congress. Of course there is the responsibility of Congress as a party to this government. Rather than shutting down metro stations and letting the agitation happen, Congress can pull the plug on AAP and give the Delhi Police charge to Kejriwal government. And that is easy. Kejriwal could have gone for a legal and constitutional means to meet the particular end with its partner.
But no. He sits on a dharna with few of his men and claims to do what ‘people’ of this nation want him to do. His followers pelt stones on police and he says that the ‘people’ are doing this. He waves a false letter in the face of the people of this country to justify his act. He is backing a minister who uses bad language saying that he wants to spit on the face of leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley. His another minister Manish Sisodia says that he will ‘fix’ the Delhi Police once receives the reigns.
Kejriwal and his men are holding the state to ransom just to prove their righteousness. Contrary to Kejriwal’s earlier claim that only MLAs wil; be protesting, he directly challanged the government by saying that he will disrupt the Republic Day parade and fill Rajpath with people. AAP members have been deliberately egging on Police and standing on barricades trying to break them so that there can be a major scuffle between policeand people. And it has begun as you can see in the pictures.
They want to milk this issue for their national gains as there are few months left to general elections in the country. This is not only evident from the slogans being shouted by Kejriwal supportes (Humara PM kaisa ho, Arvind Kejriwal jaisa ho), it is also evident from the way Kejriwal organised and staged this dharna.
He gave interviews to several channels prior to the dharna announcing that he was going to use his governments ‘few days’ in power holding dharna to meet his demnad and proving his righteousness.
Kejriwal and his unruly ‘anarchist’ man will go down as martyr if their demands are not met, or if Congress takes the support back, or the Delhi Police baton charges or uses any sort of force against the chief minister’s people.
But they need to be reminded that they are mixing issues and they are crossing the lakshman rekha by crossing the constitutional limit on lies. Their win might be grand in Delhi, but they did not even win a clear mandate in the capital. To force its arrogance on the people and to escape on the fact that they are new to power and that they have just spent 22 days in power is wrong and a mistake.
As a friend of mine, an aam aadmi that Kejriwal claims to represent, said: “What you do not forget even if you are ‘just’ 22 days old in governance: A central university needs to be representative of the entire nation. Police cannot search without warrant. Power bills needs to be paid. Cavity search on foreign national has major international consequences. Politics 101, Sirs. Politics 101.”
