The hung Games!

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!