Chanakya Charan Dass, Tikri
The 31st March 2024 rally at Ram Lila Maidan, attended practically by all parties of the INDI Alliance, under the auspices of Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party tantamount to completion of a full circle in the political life of Arvind Kejriwal. The rally was called the “Save Democracy Maharally” by Priyanka Vadra, the General Secretary of the Congress party.”
The political life of Arvind Kejriwal came a full circle as it was from the same Ram Lila Maidan that he started his anti corruption campaign in 2011 under the “Guru-ship” of the anti corruption crusader Anna Hazare. The “India Against Corruption” campaign caught the heart, soul andimagination of the Indian populace, who joined his campaign in droves. Volunteers from within the country andabroad left their home, hearth, jobs and businesses in support of Kejriwal and his anti corruption campaign. His campaign was against the governing Indian National Congress and his favourite target, besides others, was Shiela Dixit, the then Chief Minister of Delhi. He accused her of corruption in the infrastructure build up for the 2010 Commonwealth games as well as water distribution in Delhi through water tankers, which popularly came to be known as “water tanker scam.” He famously announced in November 2010 that “he had prepared a 370-page report on the Commonwealth Games which contained evidence on corrupt practices during CWG.”
This period happened to be one of those times in the history of India when the UPA regime in Delhi was embroiled in one scam or the other and literally one or another scam would break out every day.
Later, as the CM of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal declared that “he would put his entire life on stake to fight corruption, whether it is Sheila Dixit, any bureaucrat, BJP or Congress member or even any of his party members.” His videos that are viral on social media show him naming “corrupt politicians” of India. These names include P Chidambaram, Alagiri, Kanimozhi, Salman Khurshid, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Kapil Sibal, Farooq Abdullah, Sharad Pawar, A Raja, Sonia Gandhi, Tarun Gogoi, Robert Vadra etc… He named several BJP politicians too, but that is not the point. The point is that practically all the politicians from the present-day opposition parties or their representatives, those he called corrupt in his earlier “avtar” were present on the dais at the Ram Lila Maidan rally on the 31st March. They were present in full force. The politicians on the dais also included Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra, Tejaswini Yadav, D Raja, Sitaram Yechury, Uddhav Thackeray, Derek O’Brein, Mehbooba Mufti etc…
There was something spectacularly common between all the participants in the rally. It was their fear of continued deprivation of themselves andtheir respective families from the corridors of power after the elections to Lok Sabha and making an attempt to arouse public opinion against the anti-corruption drive of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and sympathy for Arvind Kejriwal.
On the day of the rally, it was a sight to see Sonia Gandhi and Sunita Kejriwal chatting with each other and they were so much engrossed in their conversation that Sonia Gandhi brushed Rahul Gandhi aside when he tried to intervene during the conversation. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi seemed to have forgotten very conveniently, that only a few years back Arvind Kejriwal had sought winding up of ED and CBI if these agencies couldn’t arrest Sonia Gandhi for finding out the truth about corruption during UPA regime.
The parochial Mehbooba Mufti was also there whose heart beats for everything else, but not for a stable India. It’s a travesty of justice that Arvind Kejriwal sought the support of the same politicians andthe political parties that he had termed as the epitome of corruption only a decade back.
But that is what Arvind Kejriwal is all about.
Kejriwal took oath on the “heads of his children” that he shall never align either with the Congress party or the BJP for forming government in Delhi, but when a situation arose as he was not able to secure majority seats in assembly elections in Delhi, he had no qualms about taking support from his arch-rival the Congress Party and formed a coalition government in Delhi on 28th December 2013. In fact, Sheila Dixit, the former CM was very categorical when she described the support as “not unconditional”, but Arvind Kejriwal still went ahead caring two hoots for his “oath.”
Arvind Kejriwal proclaimed that once in power he and his party shall dedicate themselves to the service of the people and forsake security, high brand vehicles and government bungalows, but while in office they did exactly the opposite. In fact, Kejriwal built/renovated a magnificent house as his official residence in Delhi which came to be known as “sheeshmahal” in common parlance because of the extravagant expenditure made on it from the taxpayer’s money.
His viral video at the rally of India Against Corruption is very telling. In the video he is seen to be proclaiming in a public rally that he fears the day when the alternative that comes out of the struggle under Anna Hazare comes to power and it may become as arrogant and as corrupt as the politicians from several other political parties. He rues that there is something very typical of the “kursi” (power) that whoever occupies it becomes subservient to its trappings and corruption and arrogance is the natural outcome of saddling on to the the power structure.
Basically, Arvind Kejriwal is a disruptionist. Disruption comes to him naturally as he moulded himself into the mould of an activist right from the days when he launched his NGO named Parivartan and later Kabir. Manish Sisodia too was part of these NGOs. In 2012 Digvijay Singh, the Congress leader, alleged that the NGOs were receiving funds from the Ford Foundation. He also wanted to know the relationship between these NGOs and the US based NGO, Avaaz, that, as per Singh’s allegations were funding disobedience movements in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Libya.
Kejriwal doesn’t mind calling himself as an anarchist. He sat on a dharna for several days in front of the Rail Bhawan in Delhi against Sushil Kumar Shinde, the then Home Minister of India under the Premiership of Dr. Manmohan Singh. He wanted some Delhi policemen to be suspended for their alleged disobedience. He was unmindful of the fact that the Republic Day parade was just around and the Late Shinzo Abe, the PM of Japan was going to be the Chief Guest at the parade.
There was a time when Kejriwal would exhort those politicians to resign against whom corruption or other cases were as much as rumoured. He sat on dharna in Bawana temporary jail against the then union law minister Salman Khurshid whose NGO “Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust” was blamed for collecting funds for welfare of the handicapped persons and swindling the funds. Such was the ferocity and perceived honesty of Arvind Kejriwal’s movement that political careers of several politicians came under cloud. Sheila Dixit lost her Chief Ministership and eventually Arvind Kejriwal took over the reigns of Delhi Govt.
His activism as the Chief Minister didn’t stop. He tried to showcase himself as the “activist Chief Minister” but his dictatorial streak pushed out several of his old colleagues like Prashant Bhushan, Ashutosh, Shazia Illmi, Kumar Vishwas, Yogendra Yadav and several others out of the AAP. Kumar Vishwas even blamed Arvind Kejriwal for hobnobbing with several anti national elements in lieu of collecting funds for the party.
Eventually, the Liquor Policy of his government caught up with Kejriwal. It was blamed that the policy was framed to give undue benefits to some players who paid bribes to the Aam Aadmi Party. The crusader against corruption is now in Tihar jail on court orders. The one who wanted the politicians to resign as soon as needle of suspicion (corruption) was found to be oscillating towards them refuses to resign Chief Ministership even while in jail – not even on ethical grounds. It’s a different matter that he asked his cabinet colleague, Manish Sisodia to resign the moment he was jailed in the same case. Satyendra Jain was allowed to continue as minister for quite some time after his arrest. Ram Lila Maidan saw the erstwhile blamers and the blamed on the same dais on 31st March. Events and “Kaal- time” had turned full circle for Kejriwal. It was a paradox. That is why if paradox had a name, it would have been Arvind Kejriwal!!
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