There was a time when Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was willing to sacrifice his life to ensure that Indian politics was freed from the scourge of corruption. On more than one occasion, he came perilously close. At least that’s what his collapsing vital signs signalled when he went on a Gandhi-like fast unto death demanding accountability from the UPA government of the time. That was 2010.
Four years later, he would eventually sacrifice something significant – power – the very lifeblood of politics. Indeed, Kejriwal gave up the chief minister’s post – a principled action of unprecedented proportions – to protest against the BJP and the Congress blocking his anti-corruption efforts. Kejriwal’s renunciatory gesture set the bar for morality stratospherically high. And he was suitably rewarded with a massive mandate from appreciative voters. Soon, Kejriwal was imparting lessons in propriety to all and sundry, especially his political rivals.
At one end he would deride the perks of office, dismissing them as patrician vanities, an insult to the toiling taxpayer, and at the other end he would pledge to only accept poll funds that were crowd-sourced. All very virtuous.
Today, in a profound inversion of personal integrity, that same Kejriwal is being accused of taking kickbacks. He’s been jailed for presiding over a party and government allegedly hollowed out by the blight of corruption. The AAP has protested terming the ED cases as the vengeful action of an insecure Modi government.
The indictment against Kejriwal has however been passed by no less an authority than the Delhi High Court. And within 24 hours of the welts imparted on the AAP’s body politic by Justice Sharma’s lashing, a Delhi government minister called Raaj Kumar Anand has quit.
Raaj Kumar Anand may have been in the shadows, not given to hogging the limelight like the others in AAP, but he certainly has emerged from them to shed light on the party’s financial improprieties. Anand says that after the Delhi High Court’s verdict, his conscience doesn’t allow him to continue in the party that was founded on the principle of eradicating graft. The AAP has reminded us that Anand had also received a knock on his door from the ED. His resignation therefore should be seen as an act of cowardice.
AAP’s defence would have been easily accepted had Anand been the first from Kejriwal’s inner circle to have quit in disillusionment. Before Anand, the likes of Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas and Ashutosh all broke away from the AAP claiming that Kejriwal had strayed far from the idealism that underwrote a movement for change.
Kejriwal, the consummate wielder of the ‘broom’ is in danger of getting swept asunder by the tide of corruption allegations cascading into the AAP’s door.
Shouldn’t Kejriwal take the moral onus for the AAP’s slide into the sludge of corruption that he once said only sticks to other morally weaker parties? Should he not apply the stringent moral code he prescribed for others to himself? The urgency with which these questions are being posed will only grow in poll season.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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