A below-the-belt blow on poll eve

Julio Ribeiro

I have met Arvind Kejriwal only once. It was sometime in 2005 or 2006 at a meeting of trustees of the Public Concern for Governance Trust (PCGT). BG Deshmukh, former Cabinet Secretary and former Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, was the trust chairman at that time. Kejriwal had been invited to meet the trustees and explain to them the work he was doing to combat corruption in the Income Tax (I-T) Department in New Delhi.

Among the witnesses the ED has stacked up to prove Kejriwal’s guilt, the main one is a co-accused who has turned approver on the promise of a pardon.

Kejriwal was a regular recruit to the Indian Revenue Service through the UPSC’s civil services examination, the one in which Deshmukh and I had appeared years earlier — Deshmukh got into the IAS and I into the IPS.

Kejriwal used to arrive for work an hour before the official time and set up a small table with a chair outside the central I-T office. Applicants for I-T refunds or PAN cards could take his help to get their work completed expeditiously without payment of ‘speed money’. It worked, but not without ruffling feathers. He displeased many of his colleagues. How many of them are in the Enforcement Directorate (ED) today? Are any of them handling the investigation against him?

Since the PCGT had been established for the express purpose of improving the quality of life of the common resident of Mumbai by monitoring governance, Kejriwal told us of an NGO in the national capital that he was mentoring so that people’s woes could be addressed. The trustees of the PCGT were impressed with his commitment to the cause of integrity and justice.

Would, nay could, a man so devoted to values of good governance transform overnight into an ogre bent on fattening himself on filthy lucre? To those who have had a glimpse of his personality, his thinking and his attitude of mind and heart, it seems impossible. Like in the case of AAP MP Sanjay Singh, no money has been traced to him.

The next time Kejriwal came to my attention was when he rode on the back of that great exponent of good conduct and honest, simple living — Anna Hazare. Now, Anna was an institution in my state, Maharashtra. Like many people there, I know most things about Anna. I interacted with him on more than a couple of occasions. Anna is a simple man, but since he has been lionised and feted by so many individuals so many times, the adulation has affected his capacity to weigh possibilities and probabilities calmly.

The combination of Anna and Kejriwal had the promise of becoming a game-changer. But Kejriwal had other ideas. These ideas were not anticipated by Anna or by most citizens who applauded the two for raising the banner of revolt against one of the two biggest impediments to India’s progress — corruption (the other is communalism). Just as the battle was taking a winning turn, Kejriwal announced his intent to enter the political arena by forming the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

This decision dismayed Anna and sundry other admirers like me. He saw in this move a betrayal by a man in whom he had placed his trust. Anna had always dreamed of himself as a moral force who kept away from the spoils that politics engenders. But that is a different story. Today, we are concerned with the BJP’s intricate plan of extinguishing all credible opposition to its political hegemony.

Kejriwal is accused of unfairly tweaking the Delhi Government’s excise policy for the sale of liquor in the Capital. If he had a hand in shaping or changing that policy, I would not be surprised. All political parties need money to operate. They have no means of financing their activities, except kickbacks from contracts and dispensation of favours to business houses. Turnkey deals like the purchase of the Bofors guns or the Rafale jet fighters are the most obvious temptations. Every citizen knows that this is routinely done by governments and condemned by Opposition parties. But the Indian citizen is impervious to such peccadilloes. She/he has accepted it as inevitable.

What the citizen is not accustomed to is the single-minded hounding of Opposition parties and their leaders by unleashing the ED and the I-T authorities relentlessly on their opponents to ensure an Opposition-mukt Bharat. Kejriwal’s arrest has shaken the conscience of the nation’s right-thinking citizens even more than the I-T Department’s initial order freezing the Congress’ bank accounts for the recovery of I-T dues (coercive action has now been put on hold). These are below-the-belt blows delivered by a boxer who viciously pulverises his opponent even though the latter is losing!

The BJP conceived of electoral bonds for financing the costs of fighting elections. Its pickings would hurtle it to victory because Opposition parties would be left with the crumbs. In a country where money is used to buy votes and bring down governments formed on the basis of the people’s mandate, it is not surprising that an up-and-coming party like AAP would formulate a scheme to add substance to its piggy bank.

Kejriwal has certainly not used any of the money his party has raised via the alleged kickbacks from liquor dealers, whether they hailed from the South or the North, for his personal expenses. If that is the allegation against him, no one will believe that such a thought could even enter his mind. It is equivalent to accusing the chowkidar of being a thief!

Among the witnesses the ED has stacked up to prove Kejriwal’s guilt, the main one is a co-accused who has turned approver on the promise of a pardon. That same approver bought electoral bonds worth crores of rupees days after he turned approver and was set free on bail. The approver’s father, Magunta Sreenivasulu Reddy, has been given the ticket by the Telugu Desam Party, a BJP ally, from the Ongole Lok Sabha seat in Andhra Pradesh.

The old man who delivers my newspapers is my sounding board for what the poorer citizens think of political events. “Poor Kejriwal,” he said, “he had done much for the jhuggi-jhopri dwellers of Delhi in the fields of education and health and given them free electricity. Now, he will languish in jail unless he joins the BJP.”

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