'Having seen AAP from close quarters, I think it is time to put an end to Kejriwal's quixotic charade'

By Firoz Bakht Ahmed*
With the drubbing in the recent MCD election in Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal’s political tantrums have been exposed outright and he has lost his faith, face and trust. Arvind’s earlier allegation about EVM being manipulated and the threat to flood the roads with protestors, is nothing but the exposure of his usual image of an urban Maoist/ Naxal bound to replace poise and tranquility with anarchy in the capital city of India.
Having used Anna Hazare, Santosh Hegde, Kiran Bedi, Prashan Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Shazia Ilmi, Mayank Gandhi, Madhu Bhaduri, Dharamvir Gandhi, Captain GR Gopinath, MS Dhir, Anjali Damania, Maulana Shamoon Qasmi, Ashok Aggarwal, Vinod Kumar Binny, Ashwini Upadhyay (the ex-spokesperson AAP), Shakeb Ayaz, Surajit Dasgupta, myself and umpteen others, as tissue paper as part of “use and throw” tact, having left Delhi in the lurch for pouncing upon the prime ministerial berth, having taken the Delhi’ites for a ride by taking umpteen u-turns and having dumped the Lokpal Bill, Arvind Kejriwal has not only lost his face and ground in Delhi and all over India but also has become today’s politics’ most genuine fake and of course — fake. He burns the same ladders that help him climb the top.
Unfulfilled promises of 500 schools, wifi and 15 lac CCTV etc have all fallen flat besides the educational bandwagon of Delhi’s schools going haywire by cutting 25 per cent of syllabus and dividing the unassuming children into three categories as if they were commodities. This happened because education’s most important ministry was handed over to a man who knew not even the a, b, c of educational paraphernalia.
In record time, AAP — an idealistic revolution eulogized as a harbinger of hope and an anti-corruption messiah — has degenerated into a rank political broker and dealer like any other political party having all kinds of atrocities and vicious leaders including the rapists, fake degree holders, corrupt MLAs besides others. Though promising to be different, they are like any other petty political party running after power and God of Mammon with the largest number of biggest hoardings all over the city. Honesty plus hubris and self-righteousness spells disaster; that is what the AAP is.
Having observed Kejriwal’s two-year old track record and how he swindles the common man, we the people of Delhi, wish that the juggler is not enthroned again in 2020. He had been taking people for a ride by a spree of lunch and dinner parties at the rate of Rs. 20,000 in the name of party fund all over India. Who knows where it had gone and how it was used!
Arvind Kejriwal ditched the people of Delhi saying that he’ll come by Metro and will not take any staff, security or government accommodation only to hire a staff of 30 people at his government house at Tilak Lane in Delhi after he resigned as CM in 49 days and then accommodating himself in the 2 acre bungalow with 45 air conditioners with an electricity bill of more than Rs 2.5 lac! Today, he has 2-tier security, now a very Khas Admi (VIP) from an Aam Admi (common man).
AAP leaders claim that they are simple accessible servers of the people but after assuming office none of them was available on landline, mobile or even on the message system, what to talk of meeting personally.
We all know that Kejriwal loves media glare the way he had spent 97 pac rupees in modelling his picture on Delhi Goa and Punjab’s hoardings. Delhi’ites have also seen, how he got carried by media channels in 2014 projecting his picture beside Modi and Rahul as prime ministerial candidate making him flee from Delhi to Varanasi in the hope of becoming the prime minister of the new ruling conglomerate! It was a slap in the face of Delhi’ites.

Mr Kejriwal is not the messiah as mistaken by umpteen people but an interloper, greedy, dangerous and inflexible person out to destroy the calm and poised fabric of this nation.
The author was the biggest supporter and advocated the cause of AAP but owing to their opportunism and vested interests, I decided to call a day. I had resigned in May 2014 from this nasty and corrupt collaboration of some selfish people in the guise of pioneers against corruption, funded by foreigners to spread anarchy in India. My ill-measured and ill-omened political nuptial with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had ended finally making me resign from it the moment I got close quarters to Arvind and found him to be the most opportunistic, untrustworthy, unstable and undemocratic character of present day politics.
Though I was the one to set his media cell roll speedily for the good at all channels as tri-lingual spokesperson but he stung me in no time thinking that the author was getting popular and might become the media face of AAP. That way Arvind is very insecure.
Having seen the movement grow, many people like me had thought that they would also serve for the cause against corruption, inflation and communalism, but having been enlightened about the truth they understood that they had chosen the wrong people.Even today, many people are deserting the party.
Many people told me that they made lifetime mistake by joining this so called “movement” meant to promote honesty in politics actually led by power hungry, covetous, unfeeling and cold-blooded people duping innocent masses by their oratorical jargon. Having seen the AAP from close quarters, it is time to put an end to the quixotic charade masquerading as the voice and face of the common man. I would also advise well meaning people of AAP like Raghav Chadha, the spokesperson.
---
*Activist and columnist, grandnephew of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Counterview

Search This Blog