Can AAP do it ?

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Harish Gupta

The confusing acceptance by AAP mastermind Arvind Kejriwal of the job of chief minister of the city state of Delhi, and the equally perplexing promptness with which he chucked it, leave questions looming as to his true motive.

A charitable explanation can be that he is too deeply associated with his gang of oddballs used to protesting in the streets to come out of it and breathe the fresh air of power. It seems, though, that the plot is more complex.

With the early opinion polls on the April/May general elections pointing at a shocking decline of Congress, the odds have naturally moved to BJP and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. AAP is probably bent on stopping him against a strategic barricade that looks morally correct but may be powered by a plan, hatched by both politicians and corporate strategists, to kill two M birds with one stone—Modi and Mukesh Ambani of the Reliance Industries Limited. They are known to be close to each other.

There is no doubt that Mukesh Ambani is in the cross hairs of Kejriwal, and his politics is a rather crude blend of corporate battle with anarchic street politics. “Both parties (BJP and Congress) clearly have an unholy nexus with the big industrial houses (read RIL) and our swift action against them had left them with no choice but to sabotage the Jan Lokpal Bill,” reads an e-mail from AAP after Kejriwal’s resignation. The obvious question that follows is, if enactment of the Jan Lokpal Bill was indeed AAP’s prime objective, why did Kejriwal fulminate against RIL before achieving it? It was not just limited to fulmination. The AAP administration approached Delhi Lt. Governor Najeeb Jung to file an FIR against Mukesh Ambani, present and former Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministers Verappa Moily and Murli Deora and others for a “conspiracy” to create an artificial shortage of natural gas, leading to the proposed doubling of gas price from April 1.

 Going by AAP’s own admission, it wanted first of all to get its pet Jan Lokpal Bill to be passed. It was bound to be a contentious issue, though, as Kejriwal and his legal pundit Prashant Bhushan had made it clear that their government wouldn’t go through the nicety of getting the Union Government’s approval for it. Sure they didn’t, thus making it a foregone conclusion that AAP’s motion would be defeated in the assembly and Kejriwal and his friends would pack up and leave. But it was an even more sly move to bring Mukesh Ambani into focus at this juncture, by screaming that Congress and BJPtogether had thwarted the Jan Lokpal Bill not because of their opposition to the bill as such but due to string-pulling by Big Business that control both the national parties.

It is a time-honoured strategy of Indian politicians to raise the bogey of business houses and their alleged proximity to rival politicians, and reap electoral dividends. Indira Gandhi used the technique with great effect in her 1971 “massive mandate” election in which she claimed that the opposition had been fed from businessmen’s hands because they were peeved about her nationalization moves and pro-poor programmes. Eighteen years later, the late V. P. Singh paid Congress back in its old coin when he, with his newspaper-owning friend Ramnath Goenka, unleashed a powerful campaign against Reliance’s founder Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh’s father, suggesting a nexus between him and the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi. This campaign, overlapping with revelations about graft in the governmental purchase of Swedish howitzer Bofors, whipped up a storm so powerful that Congress got uprooted from power. This time, however, AAP has twin targets. Since Mukesh Ambani has maintained strong links with both Congress and BJP, AAP wants to catch two birds with one net.

AAP’s logic behind playing the Mukesh Ambani card to explain its defeat in Delhi assembly on the Jan Lokpal Bill, which saw BJP and Congress combining, is hopelessly flawed. It is inadmissible, constitutionally, for a state assembly to discuss a bill that may either incur a cost on the Central exchequer, or involve a legislative proposal which is not in conformity with a Central law already in existence (such as the Lokpal Act). In such cases, a nod from the Centre is required. Since such requirement was blithely disregarded, the bill, even if approved by the assembly, would certainly have been blocked either by the executive or judicial authorities. It was nothing more than a ploy, therefore, to bring Mukesh Ambani to the forefront of attack in the election campaign weeks.

It is not without strategic planning, it seems. Following Delhi, nearly all big cities of the country now want their auto-rickshaws  to use natural gas as ‘clean’ fuel, thus qualifying the vehicles to put on the yellow-and-green livery, indicating use of CNG or LPG, instead of the diesel or petrol variants, painted yellow and black. A steep increase in auto’s fuel cost on the eve of the May 2014 election will naturally have a shock effect on the urban voters. It may also impact the price of domestic cooking gas (Rahul Gandhi tried to apply brake on it by ordering a sharp rise in subsidised LPG cylinders from nine per household to twelve), not to speak of many more end-users, like owners of CNG-powered automobiles and customers of gas-fired electricity. While ordinary public has little knowledge of the global nature of costs in exploring and producing gas, even when the wells are within India’s territorial limits, a spike in gas price is a potent excuse to rouse emotions about a cosy nexus, real or imaginary between moneybags and politicians.

Whether it will make a big dent in BJP’s tally is not known. But there is a distinct possibility that AAP is moving on with a clear plan to garner a considerable number of seats in the next Lok Sabha at the cost of both the parties. It wants its voice to be heard in the national affairs. Delhi is too small a place for its ambitions.

(The author is National 

Editor of Lokmat group 

of newspapers 

based in Delhi)