New Delhi:
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s broadside on Arvind Kejriwal Tuesday – naming the former Delhi Chief Minister as the “architect of the liquor scam” and raking up the ‘sheeshmahal‘ jab, a staple of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s attacks – underlined the chasm between his party and the Aam Aadmi Party, both of which remain (on paper, if nothing else), part of the INDIA opposition bloc and national allies.
Addressing a rally in Delhi’s Patparganj, before the city votes next week in an election that could, potentially, enhance or break Arvind Kejriwal’s political reputation, Mr Gandhi took aim both at the AAP leader and his right-hand man, ex-Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, both of whom had been arrested, and jailed, by the Enforcement Directorate on corruption charges.
Both were released on bail, by the Supreme Court, late last year.
Mr Gandhi campaigning in Patparganj is significant because it is Mr Sisodia’s seat.
“… Kejriwal had a small car (the blue Maruti Wagon-R that the AAP leader reported stolen in October 2017) when he came, and he declared he will introduce a new kind of politics. He had climbed an electric poll and promised to transform Delhi…”
“But when the poor people of Delhi needed him, he was nowhere to be found. When there was violence in Delhi (referring to the riots of 2020) he was nowhere to be seen. He talked about ‘clean politics’ but the biggest liquor scam took place in Delhi,” Mr Gandhi raged.
And then the Congress leader weighed in with the ‘sheeshmahal‘ jab, comparing the BJP’s allegations – that the AAP spent Rs 45 crore to renovate the Delhi Chief Minister’s bungalow when Mr Kejriwal held the post – to his vacating his MP bungalow after he was suspended.
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“I was thrown out of my house by (Prime Minister Narendra) Modiji… and I handed them (the BJP) the keys and said you can keep it. But Kejriwalji stays in a ‘sheeshmahal‘.”
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The AAP and Congress were expected to contest the Delhi election together, even after acrimony over failed seat-share talks for the Haryana election and the latter’s big defeat. Mr Gandhi, in fact, was perhaps the seniormost Congress leader to push to continue the alliance.
But within each party’s Delhi units there has long been unease and distrust of the other, dating back to a failed alliance after the 2013 election; the two joined hands to keep the BJP out of power, but fell apart two years into the term, leading to a mid-term election the AAP dominated.
Eventually, the weight of failed talks in Haryana and the squabbling that preceded sharing of the seven seats in Delhi for the April-June federal election (all of which the BJP won), took its toll and Mr Kejriwal and the Congress declared they would each contest separately.
Since then the attacks on each other have been fierce; the Congress, for example, has also targeted Mr Kejriwal over his allegations the BJP mixed “poison” in Yamuna water being supplied to the city by the saffron party-ruled Haryana government.
Delhi’s 70 Assembly seats will vote in a single phase on February 5, with results due three days later. The AAP thumped the BJP and the Congress in the last two polls, winning 67 and 62 seats.
This time it faces a much tougher challenge – from the BJP.
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