97-Crore Bill To AAP Is Part Of Modi's Revenge

Franklin D. Roosevelt was a great American president. He had made a prophetic statement in 1940 in a broadcast: "We must be the great arsenal of democracy." But it's the other way round in the present Indian political context. If he had been alive, he would have said - Not "we" but "accusations" are the great arsenals of democracy. As elections come closer, accusations, allegations, lies and half-truths starts flying like missiles. Propaganda, not truth, becomes reality. Instead of excavating "reality", lies become the most potent weapon to unsettle opponents, confuse voters, create a false reality. The attempt is to hijack people's minds and manufacture a non-existent choice, and in this game of democracy, those who can control or manipulate mediums of expression believe that they return triumphant.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi or MCD election is around the corner. Hardly 20 days are left for voting and similar efforts are again let loose to confuse minds. The players are the same and at the receiving end is AAP. It's a familiar script. The latest accusations are that the AAP government has set up a clandestine spy wing, that AAP minister Satyendra Jain is involved in a hawala racket and that people's money to the tune of Rs 97 crore has been wasted in advertisements and this should be reimbursed by AAP.

The spy wing is nothing but a feedback department created by the Delhi Cabinet in the third week of February 2016. The file was sent to then LG, Mr Najeeb Jung. It was formed to keep tabs on the daily delivery of government policies, to find out how effectively policies are implemented and to avoid any gap between policy announcement and policy execution which is the biggest bane of governance in India. Suppose government of Delhi has decided to distribute medicines free in government hospitals. It was up to this feedback department to report back if medicines are given free of cost to patients. LG was aware of this but once Delhi High Court decided that LG is not bound by cabinet decision then he called all the files to his office, feedback department file was one such file. Mr Jung's objection was that prior permission was not taken for its creation. In December 2016, before demitting office, Mr Jung had ordered CBI inquiry in 8 matters. Feedback department was one of them. CBI has raided the premises in January 2017 and taken over all the relevant files and also interrogated the officials of the said department and then registered an FIR. 

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Then the news about Satyendra Jain which is based on the assumption that long before Satyendra became minister, he had the clairvoyance to see into the future and accordingly he planned. In fact he had resigned from the said company once he decided to file his nomination for assembly elections in 2013. He won elections from Sakur Basti and then made minister in December 2013. He was again sworn in February 2015 as cabinet minister. He should be credited for highly successful Mohalla clinics. Instead he is accused of wrong doing.

The accusation of illegitimate advertisement spending is nothing new. Since the government was formed in 2015, AAP has been blamed for pilfering public money. It was accused of spending more than Rs 500 crore which was just a budgetary allocation for consolidated advertisements of all the government departments. It was alleged by the BJP and Congress both that this money was spent to glorify Mr Kejriwal. 

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But the latest accusation by our opponents is based on the recommendations of a committee formed under Supreme Court guidelines. Not many are aware that the Supreme Court in May, 2015 ordered that centre and every state should have an independent committee of three members or ombudsman to audit advertisement expenses by governments. To follow these guidelines, the AAP government formed a three-member committee led by eminent journalist Om Thanvi in July 2016 but suddenly the Modi government issued a new circular that the Delhi government did not have the power to form such a committee; instead, it said, the central government will constitute the committee. So the AAP government's committee was scrapped and the central government's committee was imposed on us. The Supreme Court guidelines very clearly underline the fact that the members of the auditing committee should be men of "unimpeachable integrity and neutrality". The choice of two members by the Modi government betrays the very qualifications laid down by the court. Rajat Sharma as a student was a member of the ABVP, which is affiliated to the BJP and he is now known for his close proximity to top BJP leaders including Modi and Arun Jaitley. Piyush Pandey was an integral member of Modi's campaign team for the 2014 parliamentary election. First, the scrapping of the AAP government's committee and then the central government's choice of members gives away a deeper design, and if such a committee passes any order against AAP, then why it should not be construed that "impartiality" has been abandoned?

It is to be noted that this committee's report had been lying with the Lieutenant Governor since September 17, 2016, but he has asked to execute its recommendations now, exactly after six months, when the MCD election is less than a month away. Why now? What was he waiting for? Is there some malicious intent to muddy the democratic waters and paint a black picture of AAP? 

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By now, AAP is used to such dirty tricks of the  BJP. During the 2015 assembly election, similar charges were levelled. AAP was accused of getting 2 crores from from dubious shell companies. A very high profile press conference was organised by a fake organisation called AVAM. The media lapped up the issue. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was heard saying, "AAP had been caught red handed." The Prime Minister also spoke about it, calling it "Kaali raat ke kaale karname (the black deeds of black nights)". AAP openly said that if there was any wrong doing on behalf of its members, they should be arrested. It has been more than two years, but nothing has happened. In fact, the Modi government in its submission has admitted in the Delhi High Court in 2015 that nothing wrong has been found in AAP's funding. The Manmohan Singh government made a similar statement before Delhi High Court before the 2014 parliamentary election on a similar allegation of AAP funding by its detractors.

I would like to remind our readers that a few days before polling in AAP's debut election in 2013, a sting operation surfaced indicting AAP candidates and leaders including Shazia Ilmi, who is now in the BJP, of accepting illegal money. This sting operation could not prove the culpability of any AAP leader and it was discovered to be the handiwork of a journalist. He was allegedly handsomely paid to malign the image of AAP as an honest party. The story did not impress the voters of Delhi, and AAP returned with 28 seats. AAP's success was hailed as "nothing less than a revolution". Similar accusations did not dent the image of AAP in 2015 too. Voters were not impressed by the lies and insinuations of the BJP. AAP returned with 67 seats and the BJP was reduced to only 3 members of the legislative assembly. The Congress could not open its account. AAP got the mandate of 54% votes, which was the highest ever for any political formation in the national capital. 

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Ordinarily, elections for local bodies do not attract the attention of high-profile leaders and political parties don't raise the stakes like this. These are small elections and fought on very localised issues. Local faces are given more importance than top political parties or leaders, but the BJP, led by Modi, has decided to take these elections very seriously because:

1. It has even now not reconciled with its most humiliating defeat in Delhi. In Modi's long career, the defeat in Delhi in 2015 will always be a black spot. Now he wants to avenge this and prove that AAP's success was a fluke.

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2) The BJP also wants to prove that it is unstoppable after the grand victory in UP and Uttarakhand, and its standing in recent local elections in states like Maharashtra and Odisha will set the tone for Gujarat later this year and other assembly elections due next year. 

Modi is a smart politician. He knows the power of propaganda. But will he succeed is the question because "the height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it", as said by French writer Duc de la Rochefoucauld. 

(Ashutosh joined the Aam Aadmi Party in January 2014.)

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