Runaway CM or a self-less Martyr ? What
defines Arvind Kejriwal's resignation today? Is he really sacrificing
the CM's chair for the Jan Lokpal bill today, as he claims to be, or
is this a well thought out exit strategy of the AAP government to
gain enough popularity and take the first exit off the freeway.
The Delhi governent has
resigned, no, it has not fallen, because no opposition party has
questioned it, nobody has shown a no-confidence motion against this
government, but they have voluntarily resigned. And the logic they
give is, that if we cannot pass the Jan Lokpal bill then we will
resign, I want to ask the AAP and the CM, what have they done to pass
this bill? What efforts have they made build consensus about it. They
had 28 seats in the assembly when they formed the government, so it
was very clear that they couldnot pass any bill on their own, they
needed support from other parties to do it. And to genuinely pass
this bill they would need to build consensus among the other parties
in the state. Get everyone on board, only then something could be
done. The assembly is not just the AAP MLAs, it is all the 70 MLAs
representing the people of Delhi, and any bill that gets passed or
rejected is the responsibility of all 70 of them. They should have at
least waited for some discussion to happen in the assembly before
accusing every non-AAP person in the country of being against the Jan
Lokpal bill.
But for that, they would need to take
some effort to get it tabled properly, with everyone's consensus and
following due process. The BJP and Congress today were not against
the Bill, they were against the process being followed to table the
bill, and their reservations are justified. I don't know whether
tabling the Jan Lokpal bill in the assembly today was legal or not,
and I'm no legal expert to comment on it, but I beg the question that
if there was a legal disagreement among the people about a legal
process of tabling a certain kind of bill then why could it just not
be taken to the supreme court? Why could Mr Kejriwal not just go to
the Apex court and get a clarification. Instead what he chose to do
was accuse everyone against him of misleading the people. But if they
are indeed misleading the people Mr AK then why don't you clarify,
why don't you explain to us what is the legality of the situation.
Why can't you hold junta darbars and give away leaflets explaining
these complications to the common man. Why do you just say that “I
have read the constitution, these people are liars, I don't need
anyone's permission to table this bill”. My way or the highway can
hardly ever work in a democratic setup. Even the great Abraham
Lincoln had to take all the efforts he could to convince fellow
senators for the passage of the 13th Amendment. He didnot resign from
government when there was lack of support, he tried everything in his
power to get as many senators on board as possible, and he succeeded
didn't he.
When the AAP government was formed in
Delhi all efforts were taken to explain to the common man what a
minority government is, including youtube videos and radio ads. But
nothing of that sort was done about this constitutional complication,
this controversy is not fresh, legal experts have been known to
contradict each other in matters of constitutional law, what did the
government do to clear the air except for claiming that its own legal
experts were right and everyone else was wrong. If they wanted
genuine discussion in the assembly then why weren't even the MLAs
given the copies of the Bill before hand. Before the assembly
session begins the government should have been creating awareness and
genuine discussion about not just this one bill but all the bills it
wanted to pass this session, but it never happened. And as if the
lack of effort from the government was not enough, what added insult
to injury was the FIR agains Mukesh Ambani and Verappa Moily 3 days
before the assembly session. I don't know how does such an act make
any sense of timing except the obvious one that people are colluding
it to : that they wanted to use this as an excuse for why their
government has fallen. The FIR could have been files 15 days, or
one month later also. The corruption of the accused would not have
lessened in a month's time, but the Jan Lokpal bill might have
actually passed by then.
This govenrment had such a fine
oppurtunity to create an environment of healthy discourse in this
country. To create an atmosphere where we can actually come to
solutions of problems through honest dicsussion, but alas, it has
failed to do so. It has very well managed to grab the eyeballs and
get everyone talking about AAP, but it has missed a chance here
hasn't it, people don't need to be talking 'about' a party, they
need to be talking 'with' the party, about problems facing the nation
today, about reforms, discussing bills, amending laws through
discussion. That is what the assembly and the parliament are supposed
to do, quite contrary to what we have witnessed today in the Delhi
assembly and what we saw yesterday in the parliament.
I know this post may sound very
contradictory to my previous post about Mr Kejriwal and his party,
but the fact is, I won't be surprised if more AAP supporters start to
turn against them today onwards. This day could be the beginning of
the end of the Aam Aadmi rule in this country. The delhi voter had
put all his trust in one man, had voted him into power against all
odds, unprecedentedly. Is this what the Delhi voter expected? Another
election being thrust upon him within 49 days. All the promise that
he saw in a street government. A third alternative to the usual
rhetoric. And this is what he gets. He feels cheated today, all the
people who voted for AAP candidates across Delhi must feel cheated.
With another election that he faces,
it is upto the voter yet again, to take a decision of what it wants
in Delhi. And don't be surprised if there is another hung assembly.
Let the hung games begin!
