Kejriwal and his Party on a Ventilator

By Rahul Kumar, a Special Correspondent

After having run from the office of the Chief Ministership, Kejriwal has been making strenuous efforts to rebuild his party. Many people who joined AAP deserted Kejriwal because of his autocratic attitude. From the mouth of an insider Kejriwal does not keep anybody in confidence except Manish Sisodia. The reason is obvious. Crowd pullers like Kumar Vishwas and Shajia llmi have already left the party. A retired Professor Anand Kumar Sharma, a thoughtful ideologue of AAP hardly to be seen in the television debates.

Shajia llmi had distributed a stamp paper duly signed by her in the RK Puram constituency in which she gave telephone numbers that are currently switched off. The voters of the RK Puram have been searching llmi since her disappearance from the constituency. She claims to be a social activist having all sympathy for the people of Delhi especially women abstain from visiting the RK constituency since her loss at the elections. Ye Public hai Ye sab jaanti (Public knows everything).

On the day  of Delhi Dialogue at Jantar Mantar, I, as an observer asked AAP volunteer about Kumar Vishwas. On the condition of anonymity, I was told  that Kumar Vishwas had left the APP after the debacle in the Lok Sabha elections because Kejriwal has turned a greedy and opportunistic. Kejriwal and his close lieutenants do not have any pressing public issues whereby they can pull the people to the AAP camp. The middle class is enormously upset with the attitude of Kejriwal. There is no hope in the future to see the return of the middle class to the party despite several big promises being made by Kejriwal. If we look at the economics of Delhi government budget a sensible person can say safely that Kejriwal cannot build new 20 colleges in Delhi in a period of five years even if he gains the absolute majority in Delhi Assembly elections. If not, then false promises are as bad as the worst economic condition of the Delhi government. MCD is already reeling under financial debt and there is no sign of recovery in the near future. The memory of the people of Delhi is as sharp as a razor to understand the clever tricks being used by Kejriwal and his lieutenants to befool the voters of Delhi.

The majority of unemployed people hired by the party on a daily basis to distribute handbills and stage protests on the streets of Delhi know from their heart that Kejriwal has lost confidence of the voters of Delhi. Kejriwal is thoroughly anti-reservation, hence the majority of the people belonging to the weaker sections now understand Kejriwal and his false agenda for the poor, cluster dwellers. The bottom line is that Kejriwal and his party is on a ventilator.

Rahul Kumar( rkbsooru@gmail.com) is a Ph.D candidate at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.