Well, it was really in bad taste, even if
it didn't surprise us.
Now, it doesn't hurt anymore that the Aam
Aadmi Party has deviated to the extent that we don't find any semblance to the
party that people had shown faith in to deliver the needed political change.
Instead of bringing the change, the AAP has
changed completely. Not going ethical and compromising on people's pasts have
become very much the character of the AAP in this short duration of its second
tenure - since February 14, 2015 - when Arvind Kejriwal took the oath of office
again.
But, even by the present standards, the arrest
of Delhi's law minister Jitender Singh Tomar looked more like a drama than a
genuine legal development and each unravelling development kept us hooked
throughout the day.
He claims his graduation and law degrees
are genuine while the controversy surrounding it says there are fake and the resultant
matter is sub-judice. The Delhi Bar Council has cancelled his registration
finding his graduation degree fake after enquiry and filed a complaint on it.
The Delhi Police claims Tomar's arrest has
not been done in a hurry and the step has followed the norms laid by the
Supreme Court.
Well, whatever be the truth of his degrees,
if there was a controversy, he should not have been made a minister till he
cleared the row. Politics of ethics and anti-corruption stand that the AAP
claimed to be the motivating points did not permit that.
Okay, let's accept that he was made a
minister in the run of political experiments and therefore deserved the benefit
of doubt. But then he should have been asked to resign from his ministerial
chair the day the matter was cropped up in a big way by the AAP's political
opponents.
Delhi's law minister Jitender Singh Tomar
is facing serious allegations of subverting law. He is facing criminal cases of
cheating and forgery. The political constituency of honesty that the AAP
claimed to be his forte demanded immediate resignation of Tomar. He should have
resigned the day the reports surfaced that the institutions from where he
claimed to get degrees denied his claims.
He didn't do it. The AAP didn't do it. And Arvind
Kejriwal chose to defend his minister.
He decided to slug it out in courts and in
public to get the political mileage, like he tries to do in every case these
days. That was in line with a changed AAP - behaving like any other outfit.
The AAP was playing a politically pragmatic
game, as is the political norm, that it does in every case these days, to score
political mileage, to play the victim card, to gain the sympathy factor, before
the Punjab assembly polls. Yes, a senior AAP leader mentioned Punjab in his
retaliatory remarks. Like has become the trademark of the AAP, his leaders,
once again, issued irresponsible and anarchist statements today.
Anarchy is always politically relevant in
every society, but not in this way, not the way the AAP thinks.
And like the AAP, its political opponents,
including the BJP, too are playing the 'pragmatic' political games to further
the political interest.
Yes, but the drama that surrounded
detention and arrest of Tomar should have been avoided. There was no need to
hastily arrest him when he was cooperating and the case was pending in the High
Court where the next date of hearing is in August. Yes, what unfolded today
looked 'farcical' as the Delhi court observed.
But, then who cares for these things these
days in the course of furthering political interests.
What happened today in Delhi have been
linked to the ongoing L-G Vs CM row in Delhi and that is quite natural. The
Lieutenant-Governor appointed a Joint Commissioner of Police to head the Delhi
Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) which the AAP government rejected. To further the
L-G Vs CM political tug-of war, the secretary issuing the appointment order on
the L-G's order was removed. Obviously, the L-G had to reject and he rejected
it.
Kejriwal is completing four months in
office but his government has failed to do anything concrete for Delhi. Yes,
there are electricity and water tariffs to talk about but these are far from
enough. We don't see any roadmap from the AAP but a confrontational attitude - within
the party - and outside it. Senior AAP leaders are fighting and 'shouting on
political opponents'.
If this trend, that is in the self-destruct
mode, continues, the AAP is bound to fail even in Delhi. After all, we are yet
to see something politically constructive from the AAP. There is no trace of
consolidating gains when it should have been the priority.
Arvind Kejriwal has not reconciled with the
fact that Delhi is a half-state, or probably doesn't want to. Delhi is also the
national capital of the country. It has to be run in consultation with the
Centre.
The L-G may or may not feel the heat of the
ACB opening case of an old scam, but the AAP is certainly feeling the heat at
the moment. And almost of it is its own doing.
