Brick by brick, Arvind Kejriwal’s anti-corruption edifice crumbles
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, February 28: Arrest of the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia, who is also an alter ego of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, invited yawning lament from the Opposition camps. A section of the Opposition parties offered grudging lamentations, belting out usual “Narendra Modi is misusing the CBI, ED against opponents”.
The message was clear for Kejriwal that his 2024 campaign has been rocked and he would struggle to gain the centre stage until he sacked his jailed minister Satyendra Jain and Sisodia, who is now in the CBI custody on charges slapped against him under Prevention of Corruption Act in which getting bail is a daunting task, for onus is on the accused to prove innocence. By all accounts, Kejriwal risked drowning his electoral boat if he failed to sack Sisodia and Jain.
Grudgingly, both the beleaguered ministers have resigned, and their portfolios would be distributed among the existing ministers. Kejriwal will not touch any portfolio to ensure that no agency ever touches him as he doesn’t sign any paper. Resignations of the two ministers have come after Kejriwal committed the hara-kiri of morality in politics by not sacking Jain, who is languishing in the Tihar Jail for the past seven months. Worse, Jain was a Minister for prisons. There could have possibly been no parallel for such horrendous arrogance on the part of Kejriwal that he allowed a jailed minister to summon prison officials in his cell.
By sweeping Punjab Assembly elections last year, Kejriwal had a near perfect launch pad for the 2024 general elections. This was despite the fact that the main Opposition party Congress abhors the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Even the likes of the Trinamool Congress, Janata Dal (United) and others have lowered the warmth level with Kejriwal in the recent months for his visible political arrogance.
The scrapped ‘New Excise Policy’ for which Sisodia is facing the CBI and ED music has made several liquor traders lose in a big way as the Delhi government sought to flood the market places with liquor shops and the businessmen who thought they would be counting money to dizzying wealth found that there were too many of them in small areas dreaming same fantasy.
With two ministers down on corruption charges even while they have not yet been held guilty, Kejriwal has come a long way from holding the kangaroo courts on Jantar Mantar road where he summarily announced leading lights of politicians convicted of corruption on hearsay.
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