From schools and clinics to cow politics

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 15

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal started his Haryana campaign on the plank of development by promising better schools and hospitals if his Aam Aadmi Party comes to power in the state, but has suddenly switched over to “cow politics”.

In the past three days, he has visited three gaushalas (cowsheds) in three districts and has tried to convey that he is a better ‘gau sewak’ than Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.

During all these visits, Kejriwal said stray cows in Delhi were getting better treatment than in Haryana, as his government had been spending Rs 40 per cow per day against merely 40 paise by the Khattar government.

The AAP convener, who has announced that his party would contest the parliamentary and Assembly polls in Haryana, had been telling voters to see the difference between the schools and mohalla clinics in Delhi and government schools and primary health centres in Haryana. Kejriwal was also involved in a war of words after he invited Khattar to visit mohalla clinics in Delhi.

Suddenly, Kejriwal has taken to “cow politics”. Naveen Jaihind, state convener of AAP, justified Kejriwal’s visits to gaushalas and said the Delhi CM was going there on the invitation of locals. Denying abandoning the development plank, he said the Khattar government “came to power by promising better care for stray cows, but has done little”.