New Delhi: It has been over a month since the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party swept to power in Delhi decimating its rivals. Kejriwal promised a pro-people and corruption-free administration but ever since he took oath of office and secrecy, the AAP government has been beset with one problem or the other.
While Kejriwal has been able to implement a few of his election promises and slashed power tariff by 50 per cent for consumption up to 400 units per month and also announced free 20,000 litres of water to every household per month, yet his party has been in news more due to the controversies surrounding it.
Be it the videos which allegedly showed Kejriwal encouraging horse-trading in 2014 to form government, or the infighting involving senior party leaders like Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav and now the rap by a Delhi court which observed that the Delhi Chief Minister and some of his colleagues don't respect law, the AAP is once again being seen as an outfit which is yet to handle issues facing the party with more maturity.
It all started with an audio clip released by a former AAP MLA Rajesh Garg in which Kejriwal is allegedly heard trying to split the Congress legislative party in 2014 and seek the support of its MLAs to form the government once again in Delhi. While the authenticity of the tape is unverifiable, the allegations came as a bolt from the blue for the fledging government in Delhi.
A few days later former Congress MLA Asif Mohammad Khan, too, claimed that he had some tapes of Kejriwal and another AAP leader Sanjay Singh although he failed to produce any. Khan alleged that Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh had met him separately in 2014 to explore the possibilities of government formation in 2014.
Both Garg and Khan claimed that Kejriwal was of the view that since most of the Congress MLA who won in 2013 Delhi elections were from the Muslim community, so they were unlikely to support the Bharatiya Janata Party. Kejriwal reportedly said that in such a scenario the only option for these MLAs was to support the AAP, they claimed.
Garg, who has now been suspended by the AAP for anti-party activities, also alleged that Kejriwal said that Muslims had no option but to vote for the AAP to keep out the BJP.
Soon after the tapes and allegations surfaced, the AAP plunged into another crisis with the Kejriwal camp involved in a power struggle with the Prashant Bhushan-Yogendra Yadav camp. Both Bhushan and Yadav were thrown out of the powerful Political Affairs Committee even as Kejriwal went to Bangalore's Jindal Nature Cure Institute to cure his persistent cough and control his diabetes.
Senior AAP leader from Maharashtra, Anjali Damania, resigned from the party after the tapes were made public saying she had joined politics and backed Kejriwal for "principles" and not for "horse-trading".
While Bhushan was accused of working towards ensuring the defeat of AAP in Delhi, Yadav was charged with undermining Kejriwal's authority. The Delhi CM's camp also accused the duo of trying to remove Kejriwal from the AAP National Convener's post. They had also reportedly questioned Kejriwal's 'dictatorial' style of functioning and the absence of an internal ethics committee.
Both Bhushan and Yadav have been the founding members of AAP and their expulsion from AAP's PAC deepened the fault lines with several prominent names coming out in the open to support the duo. Prominent AAP member Mayank Gandhi came out of their support.
The infighting within the party came out in the public after letters from one camp questioned Kejriwal's style of functioning and the absence of an internal ethics committee. The sharp differences were visible with allegations that Prashant Bhushan and Yadav were trying to "remove" Kejriwal from the post of party convener.
It was not the first time that Kejriwal's leadership was questioned as several big names had disassociated themselves from the AAP accusing him of not letting others air their views and being extremely rigid in his outlook.
If that was not enough, Kejriwal, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Yadav also faced the wrath of a Delhi court in a defamation case. The Karkarduma court in Delhi took a strong view on Kejriwal's absence in a defamation case while also summoning Sisodia and Yadav in the case, slammed the trio stating that they had "no respect for the law".
Kejriwal took over as Delhi's Chief Minister of Delhi on February 14, 2015 for the second time with a lot of hope, but the above mentioned incidents show that he has to do a lot to ensure order in his party.
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