New leader of Delhi uses familiar approach: Shutting down the city

New Delhi: This city's most vocal protest leader once again shut down the heart of downtown, snarling traffic for tens of thousands while he and his supporters shouted slogans denouncing police corruption.

But this time, Arvind Kejriwal held his protest while also serving as Delhi's chief minister, the equivalent of a state governor in the United States. The guy is now in charge of Delhi and still shuts it down?

That strange contradiction was etched on the confused and apprehensive faces of police officers, who tried to hold back protesters while being oddly deferential. By the end of the day, the strain became evident as scuffles between the police and the newly empowered protest leaders broke out several times.

In the middle of this chaotic scrum sat a cross-legged and eerily calm Kejriwal, munching on cardamom seeds while coughing from the city's horrid air pollution.

"We are not shutting down the city," Kejriwal said as police diverted tens of thousands of cars away from one of Delhi's busiest districts so Kejriwal could occupy it. "We are asking for justice for those women."

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"Those women" include a Danish woman who was raped recently; another woman who was badly burned; and a household of African migrants who say they were confronted last week at a private house by what they described as a mob led by Kejriwal's law minister, Somnath Bharti, who accused them of being prostitutes and drug dealers.

In an interview at the protest, Bharti said criticism that his raid was illegal and an outrageous intrusion "is an absolute lie created by Delhi police to save their own interests."

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Kejriwal was once one of India's most prominent protesters against official corruption, helping to lead vast rallies seeking legislation that would create an independent corruption investigator. After the movement fizzled, he started the Aam Aadmi Party and announced his intention a year ago to contest Delhi's elections. He was widely dismissed by political analysts, but his stunning electoral success propelled him into leading the vast city he once gleefully shut down. But three weeks into his tenure, the difficulties of being both an outsider and an insider are showing.

"I think we are redefining politics," Kejriwal said. "Until now the politics was run from air-conditioned rooms and air-conditioned offices. Now, we will run politics from the road as well as from the rooms."

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His street action Monday was intended to highlight the fact that, unlike other chief ministers in India, Kejriwal has no control over the police department, which reports to India's home ministry. He said he wants that to change, a demand that is almost certain to be ignored by India's governing Congress Party until national elections this spring.

What is less certain is how long the Congress Party will stand for Kejriwal's theatrics. While the Aam Aadmi Party won a surprising victory in December elections, it governs the state because of support from a small contingent of Congress Party legislators. Were the Congress Party ever to withdraw its support, the government would collapse and new elections would be called. But it is a prospect that Kejriwal seems to relish.

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"There is one government in India which can put everything at stake," Kejriwal said. "We mean business."

R.P.N. Singh, a junior home minister in India's central government, said in a Twitter message Monday that if Kejriwal was "serious about safety of Delhi, let these cops go back to policing."

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Mukesh Kumar Meena, New Delhi's police chief, told reporters, "We will take all possible steps to maintain the law and order."

At the protest, Kejriwal said that any time a woman is raped, the police officers in charge of the area should be suspended. Standing before a bank of TV cameras, he said his actions had nothing to do with garnering votes for national elections, which his party plans to contest.

"People say that I am an anarchist," he said as chaos swirled around him. "Yes, I do agree that I am an anarchist."

(Hari Kumar contributed reporting)