5 Questions to Arvind Kejriwal

The problem with a person who has branded himself as non-corruptible is that they cannot digest actions against him or his own people on charges of corruption. Such people are in a continuous self-praising mode. When somebody hurts their pride they almost scream against that and throw foul language, absurd arguments, etc…

There are many many such people in Indian politics, also in the BJP, but the most prominent name still remains Mr. Arvind Kejriwal.

The arguments of Kejriwal almost resemble the famous Deewar dialogue of the great Amitabh Bachchan: "Jao pehle us aadmi ka sign lekar aao jisne mere haath par ye likh diya tha…."

If CBI or for that matte any police department had to go by that logic, none of the accused in any scam, irregularities or crimes will ever be caught. Because then everyone will start shouting the same dialogue.

The anger of Kejriwal is understandable. Particularly when his one of the trusted lieutenants is questioned. But then he also should remember that in past 6 months his other 4 trusted people have been under scanner.

Once the CBI got raided 14 places in the NCR and Uttar Pradesh, a clearly unhappy Kejriwal said if CBI had to lay hands on his principal secretary Rajendra Kumar, the investigative agency should first nab ministers in the earlier Sheila Dikshit government.

Not stopping there Kejriwal went ahead to say "I will send my son to jail even, if there is evidence of wrongdoing against him."

His other argument is that CBI should have informed him and he would have acted.

1.  Does Kejriwal have a problem with CBI acting without informing him or on  the complete action at all?

2.    Is he angry that he did not get a chance to show to people of Delhi that he  acted on another of his ministers?

3.  Does that mean that every action against his own people will be taken by  Kejriwal himself?

4.     Does it not mean that in a sense CBI starts to report to him?

5.  Does it not mean that Kejriwal is contradicting his own statement that investigating agencies should be autonomous?

In this case, he made accusations against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, attributing CBI raids to search for files on Delhi District Cricket Association (DDCA), which the senior BJP leader headed for decades. It is no secret that after he became chief minister this year, Kejriwal has been very keen to pursue the DDCA case on the basis of accusations of wrongdoing made by two former Test cricketers from Delhi and some other related functionaries. Most information available is already with Kejriwal and yet, no one is sure of the merit of accusations against DDCA nor has any evidence cropped up against Jaitley but that’s how Kejriwal functions. Make big bang charges against the high and mighty, hit the headlines and let it sink in public perception through corner talks at various levels. That is what he did in 2014 general elections when he stood against Modi. He was sure he will lose but he surely latched on the publicity of Modi. He just tried to be with a big shark fish and gathered small bits of food which fell down from the shark’s mouth.

In this case also, he didn’t elaborate what possibly could be the case against Jaitley other than saying CBI’s real motive was to find DDCA files.

In May 2015, Kejriwal had accused the then Delhi acting chief secretary Shakuntala Gamlin, a senior woman IAS officer, of lobbying for private electricity companies, misconduct and insinuating corruption. But with passage of time, once she relinquished the post of chief secretary, nobody heard of any follow up action against her.

Kejriwal’s accusation against Jaitley or attaching the CBI raids with a particular motive has one major flaw. The CBI couldn’t have found the DDCA file even if such file existed as in his own words no file stays in his office for more than 10-15 days!!! Judged against that claim, Kejriwal's barrage of charge against the CBI and the Union finance minister raises more questions than Its surprising that the chief minister himself stands for an officer in his government against whom CBI conducted raids only hours ago. This is particularly surprising when Kejriwal is keen to bring a law which can arrest Prime Minister without anybody’s consent!!! Is Kejriwal overreacting and putting his own reputation in the line just as he did during the arrest of his former law minister Jitender Singh Tomar by Delhi Police in the fake degree case? Or is he fearing that the searches might lead to something else, which could trouble him in future?

The case is so sensitive that without having a concrete ad substantial lead, the CBI won’t lay their hands on the principal secretary to the Delhi chief minister and conduct raids at his office in the chief minister’s. No government would want to risk it, that too when Parliament session is on. Hence there is a possibility that Kejriwal is shouting due to fear of something coming out which is uncomfortable for him.

Now that the raids have happened, all connected parties, either the CBI and the Modi government or Kejriwal and AAP will have cow dung on their face and no ground to stand as more details would emerge. Common sense says that CBI must have done its homework well, otherwise it will have to lot of explaining to its political fraternity. If the agency failed to do so, it should prepare itself to face the wrath of the courts and also to take further beating of its image in public perception and would make a clear image of a caged parrot. As of now, there is simply too much at stake for the “premier” investigative agency. Perhaps Kejriwal and his colleagues should have shown some patience and waited for contradicting evidence to surface before blazing all guns against the CBI and Modi-led government at the Centre.

It is not at all surprising that the Kejriwal defended his use of un-parliamentary language. He is a habitual offender in that sense. The language only suggests that Kejriwal has transformed himself into a hardcore politician who is now aware how to swing an adversarial situation into a rhetorical advantage.

Despite the political acumen that the Delhi chief minister gathered in such a short spell of time, there is something he should put his thoughts to. Many of those whom he entrusted, Jitendra Singh Tomar, Somnath Bharti, Rakhi Birla - all have found themselves in the wrong side of the law. This time, the chief minister has again vouched for another of his trusted lieutenants to the extent that he declared a virtual war against the Prime Minister's Office. One can only hope that Rajendra Kumar’s name does not end up clubbed with the names just mentioned. Finally, when a person or a party stands on ideology of being un-corruptible and being clean, the party has to go through such “agnipariksha”. Kejriwal could have hit a political sixer had he given a statement to support CBI action and was ready to provide any help to CBI to unearth any wrong doings. Instead he chose to oppose which has led people to speculate “Is there something to hide Mr. Kejriwal?”

National Herald, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi

As Sonia Gandhi said “I am Indiraji’s bahu and I’m scared of no one,” in reaction to Delhi high court summons to her and Rahul Gandhi, it is important to read between the words and lines.

What was the necessity to make a POLITICAL STATEMENT when the court case is not at all political in nature?

Well, that has been the strategy of none other than Indira Gandhi when she was implicated in 1977-1980 in many criminal cases by then Janata Party government. While, the then PM Morarji Desai knew that the long legal battle could have taken away all the energy from a 60 year old lady and that Indira Gandhi was contemplating to even retire from public life, Chaudhari Charan Singh did a political suicide. He arrested Indira Gandhi, caused hardships to her and suddenly the entire public sentiment turned against the government and for Indira Gandhi. She won the 1980 elections comprehensively. Sonia Gandhi remembers this and is HOPING and WAITING for Narendra Modi government to repeat the same mistakes committed by then Janata government. Therefore, it is no surprise on part of Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi having called this court case as a political vendetta. Both of them and the entire congress party have still not come to terms that they have lost the election in 2014. They still continue to live in 20^th Century which belongs to very few good works of Congress and mostly bad politics of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi. Therefore, whenever they face a challenging situation, they can’t stop themselves from invoking Nehru, Gandhi’s. Rahul Gandhi is content in saying “meri dadi ko mara, mere papa ko mara”, somehow trying to pull out political mileage, which doesn’t stop even after a quarter of a century has passed after these sad incidents.

Sonia Gandhi has been the longest serving Congress president. She portrays herself to be an ideal “BAHU”, making her in-laws her shield and her family her sword. She expects each Congress member to worship her, her family, her in-laws and keeps on talking about the past, past, past, past….

This very attitude has prompted the culture of flaunting political connections by the smallest gully-neta when confronted by a smallest traffic police for smallest thing such as breaking the traffic signal. And this culture is hurting the nation the most today.

This attitude of Congress of publicly invoking family legacy when faced with a legal case raises the question: are legal summons an insult or disrespect to the grandeur of Sonia Gandhi’s family? A “how-dare-the court-summon-us” attitude is not particularly democratic. The attitude shows how Sonia and family wants themselves to be treated as privileged, above the law; sometimes even like kings and queens.

But this BAHU politics won’t work in the face of allegations of financial irregularities and malpractices. Sonia may try to compare herself with post 1977 Indira who dared the Janata government to arrest her and eventually used her small period of imprisonment to emerge as a martyred leader. There is hardly any comparison between 1977 and 2015. Most OTHER politicians such as Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar, Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata, Devendra Fadnavis, etc… unlike Sonia and Rahul, pride themselves on their humble beginnings.

Subramanian Swamy’s case is not a political challenge requiring street fights and maximum histrionics. Instead, the sycophants around Sonia Gandhi should advise her and Rahul Gandhi to give a point-by-point rebuttal to the charges in court. The legal maze of the National Herald case can hardly be settled through invoking the political era of Indira Gandhi.

The NDA government on other hand is happy to see the Sonia-Rahul duo and Congress squirm under the spotlights provided by the National Herald scandal, where the needle of wrongdoing clearly points to them. However, the government is also facing another challenge in Rajya Sabha over key legislative reforms, the goods and services tax (GST) being the most important among them.aught in a scandal?TI

Therefore, instead of giving in to the pressurization tactics, the government would be better advised to call the Congress' bluff. It should under no circumstances help the Congress wriggle out of the National Herald scandal by directly or indirectly pressuring the investigating or prosecuting agencies to go slow. That would be a real subversion of the rule of law.

The government should give the Congress a simple and strong message to try their best to disrupt the development of the country and that the government is prepared to sacrifice the GST, and should launch a nationwide propaganda campaign to tell the world that the Congress is derailing Indian growth story to protect one family.

The rapid shift in the Congress stand from disruptions over the Herald case to Vyapam and Lalit Modi shows that the party is exposed. The NDA should thus drive home the advantage and allow the Congress to continue with its disruptions and tell the world day in day out that this is about deflecting attention from the Gandhi family's real estate blunder, not Vyapam, which is anyway being investigated by the CBI, and the courts are already monitoring it closely.

The chances are that Congress will give up first.

No. 1, the focus continues to remain on the Gandhi family's Herald blunder.

No. 2, disruptions continue to be seen by the public as evidence that Congress and the Gandhi family is indeed hiding something.

No. 3, Congress allies have already begun to wonder whether they have to be dragged along with Congress antics just to protect the Gandhi family or should they pay the price for just being their ally.

No. 4, the GST won’t be a big loss in the short term as there will only be problems and challenges in the first two years of implementation, causing discomfort in the trading community and mild hike in inflation. GST also will cause a reduction in state autonomy on finances once implemented. It will be impossible for states to give up GST once they are in. Sacrificing GST is therefore no big deal in the short term.

There are chances the non-Congress parties will be tired of the Congress' antics which, they know, is about saving the family. Any prolonged disruption can only benefit the BJP. With state elections due again in a few months' time, the regional parties cannot but be worried about playing the Congress game.

The government should, in the meanwhile, prepare to run the reform programme through simple budgetary actions such as merging excise and service tax and the other financial actions which can be simplified and made to look like reforms.

Legislation may suffer, but not for long. If the government is willing to withstand this winter of discontent, the Congress will return to the discussion table with its tail between the legs. Meanwhile, it should persistently try to divide the opposition and get them to discuss the Congress' tactics.

It is ridiculous to think and assume that the PMO has pushed the National Herald case against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to pressurize the party to support the GST Bill. It would be too innocent to think that Modi won’t be aware of the uproar by Congress members in Parliament following the summons. He in fact would have preferred the case not coming up now as it was always clear the Congress was looking for excuses to stall the parliament functioning. While Congress sensibly argued against the 1% inter-state levy in the GST Bill, they put forth other unreasonable demands like putting an 18% ceiling on the GST tax rate in the Bill itself. That was the best way of ensuring the GST Bill never went through.

Even as Modi showed huge amount of maturity and calmness during answering the debates on both constitution and intolerance, on the day of the meeting, Rahul was sarcastic to mention to the TV channels that government had called upon Congress leaders under pressure, and that the party’s strategy was not of consultation. He further continued his rhetoric when he said that the BJP was out to hurt the interests of farmers with the Land Bill and it was the Congress party that had ensured the Bill never went through even if country needs land for industrialization and urbanization, or that farmers would be better off if they were going to get 4 times the value of their property under the BJP’s Bill, unlike the land acquisition during Congress and other regimes at throwaway prices. And then, amazingly, Rahul Gandhi went on to say that the labour reforms proposed by the BJP were going to hurt labour and the Congress would do its best to stop them. Even if everyone knows the pro-labour policy of the last 68 years has ensured poor jobs growth and so-called anti-labour reforms would do more to generate jobs; Rahul thought he would be able to convince people of this country of the same rhetoric that failed in the elections 18 months ago.

The National Herald case first came up in 2013, when the Congress party was in power, so there was no question of the BJP leadership trying to come up with it to put pressure on the party to pass the GST Bill, or any other legislation for that matter. The allegations, first made by Niti Central, were straight-forward – that Congress leaders like Sonia and Rahul Gandhi had conspired to take over the National Herald, using the Congress party’s money, and that this was done with an eye to the property owned by the newspaper. Whether the allegations hold good or not, is for the courts to decide, and that is where the matter is. If all charges against politicians are to be settled out of court; which is what the Congress party’s strategy seems to be amounting to, it is a sad day for Indian democracy.

The control of the country's longest-serving party by one family has done the nation enormous damage and distorted all politics. TIME TO END IT and MAKE CONGRESS A GANDHI MUKT PARTY. The day, majority of Congress party members gather courage to voice this known fact, better days will begin for Congress party.