The Kejriwal Meltdown

HIS POLITICAL RIVALS AS WELL AS HIS estranged former associates cannot be blamed for digging up Arvind Kejriwal’s past: of proudly proclaiming that he wouldn’t contest elections or hold any of­fice of power. If anyone said back then that he wasn’t serious about it, it would have been dismissed as blasphemy against an idealist. Later, after becom­ing Delhi’s chief minister in 2013, Kejriwal said he wouldn’t avail of official accommodation or use a government car—many people saw it as the beginning of the end of VVIP culture in the Delhi state government, and a breath of fresh air in the national capital’s power-obsessed ways. Then he vowed that he wouldn’t align with either Congress, a party he disdained, or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as if he was leading a young party on a new course. Much earlier, he had said that the day his guru and fellow anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare—who was averse to the launch of a political party out of the anti-graft entity they were all part of—severed ties with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), he, too, would call it quits. That was the birth of a new era in politics, a section of pundits averred.

The Delhi chief minister, who has been holding the post since 2015—after a previous, short-lived, less-than-two-month stint in 2013-14—has kept none of these promises, much to the delight of anyone who wants to project that the AAP chief is not a man of his word. He is now under the custody of the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in a multi-crore money-laundering case related to the 2021-22 Delhi excise policy he had initiated and had to later reverse. In his brief first term, he received the backing of Congress to keep BJP out. Over time, he broke other vows. Which is why one of his former colleagues describes this trait of his as pseudologia fantastica, a term introduced by the German physician Anton Delbrück in 1891 to describe the condition of a person who makes wild exaggerations in a compulsive fashion. Another word for it, of course, is mythomania.

Whatever that may be, Kejriwal, who is currently confined to a cell, is in a bad spot compared with where he had started as an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and former civil servant. He was looked up to as a tireless crusader against corruption just more than a de­cade earlier, but is now embroiled in a financial scandal of huge proportions. He is also the first serving chief minister to be ar­rested in a corruption case—before he was arrested on January 31, Hemant Soren had resigned as Jharkhand chief minister shortly after ED officials questioned him for more than seven hours at his official residence in Ranchi, and so the infamy falls on Kejriwal. Incidentally, for all his self-confessed idealism of the past, ever since his party came to power, Kejriwal has stopped using commercial domestic flights and flies on luxury jets of­fered by AAP’s Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, not to talk of the use of other facilities offered by the gov­ernment. For him, a prudent use of public resources is a slogan of the past. Again, high spend on advertise­ments in Delhi newspapers also means that AAP, in exchange, wields tremendous editorial clout in national newspapers.

The opposition parties, meanwhile, have attacked the in­cumbent Union government sharply for the timing of the ar­rest ahead of the General Election for which Kejriwal cannot ap­parently campaign. But the fact remains that he had been issued nine summonses by ED for interrogation, all of which he had skipped. Kejriwal was arrested by ED on March 21 after officials questioned him for two hours at his Civil Lines residence, shortly after the Delhi High Court refused to grant him protection from any “coercive” action by the Central agency. A day later, the court sent Kejriwal, who spent the previous night in a cell at ED’s headquarters at Pravartan Bhawan off Delhi’s APJ Abdul Kalam Road, to ED custody. ED, over the years, has acquired more teeth and the mere mention of it evokes deep fear (‘The Power of Fear’, Open, March 27, 2023). The 55-year-old politician immediately challenged the arrest in the Supreme Court but quickly withdrew the plea.

ED had said during the hearing in a Delhi court that Kejriwal was the “kingpin and key conspirator of the Delhi excise scam”. Accord­ing to the agency, the Delhi chief minister was involved in the conspiracy to favour certain persons and also in demanding kickbacks from liquor businessmen “in exchange of favours”. Specifically, ED told Special Judge Kaveri Baweja at the Rouse Avenue court in Delhi that Kejriwal received kickbacks from the ‘South Group’ for formulat­ing and implementing Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22. ED had also said K Kavitha, daughter of former Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, was a key player of the ‘South Group’ accused of paying AAP kickbacks in return for a big share of liquor licences in the national capital. Kavitha, a Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader and Telangana MLC, is now in jail.

Although AAP and other opposition parties were quick to assert that this was an act of political revenge, notably, the Supreme Court had as early as October last year asked ED to explain why AAP, which was said to be the beneficiary of the Delhi excise policy scam, was not made an accused in the money-laundering case. ED claims that AAP used ₹100 crore received in kickbacks from various contractors for its campaign in the 2022 Goa Assembly elections.

The excise policy scam came to surface in 2022 shortly after BJP leader Manjinder Singh Sirsa as well as the Delhi Congress sent complaints to Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena and to ED as well as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) al­leging that AAP leaders extended favours to liquor wholesalers through their revised excise policy. Later, Saxena recommended a probe by CBI over reported violations of rules and procedural lapses. CBI took up the case and later enlisted the support of ED.

Congress, which has now entered a poll pact with AAP, was at the forefront of demanding a probe to bring the guilty to justice. It had launched a scathing attack back then on Kejriwal. The Kejriwal government has come under their sharp condemna­tion over an alleged ₹3,735 crore ‘scam’ in the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) which reportedly involves accounting-related irregulari­ties since 2017. Various political parties have accused Kejriwal of being hand-in-glove with the so-called water tanker mafia. Similarly, mohalla clinics—AAP’s flagship healthcare system in Delhi—are also under the scanner for getting medi­cal tests done on dummy patients where the gain­ers are reportedly private diagnostic firms. AAP has refuted the charges, saying attempts are being made by rivals to tarnish the im­age of the chief minister.

Congress, which had to pay a heavy price thanks to the rise of AAP in Delhi, has decided to contest the Lok Sabha polls this year in al­liance with AAP in four states and one Union ter­ritory: Delhi, Haryana, Gu­jarat, Goa and Chandigarh. In Delhi, AAP will contest in four seats—New Delhi, West Delhi, South Delhi, East Delhi—and Congress in three (Chandni Chowk, North-East and North-West). In Gujarat, AAP will contest from Bharuch and Bhavnagar and in Haryana from Kurukshetra in a tie-up with Congress which, as usual, will contest from several constituencies.

HOWEVER, THE POLITICAL cost for Congress in the last 12 years has been massive. Since the launch of AAP on October 2, 2012, Congress was the new party’s biggest target. AAP had singled out Congress’ then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, who had been in power since 1998, for attack over power tariffs and for alleged favouritism for private players. Since AAP rode to power in Delhi, Congress has not recovered from its losses that have only become heavier elec­tion after election. In 2020, Congress’ tally touched a record low in the Delhi Assembly election: it secured less than 5 per cent of the total votes polled and 63 of its candidates in 70 seats lost their deposits. Not only had it fared badly but it had also failed to open its account for the second consecutive Assembly elec­tion in Delhi. Paradoxically for a party that ruled for a straight 15 years from 1998 to 2013, only three Congress candidates managed to save their deposits. The anti-Congress sentiment promoted by AAP damaged the grand old party at the national level, too, reducing its performance in the Lok Sabha elections to the lowest of lows since AAP’s emergence.

Not surprisingly, AAP’s presence in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc has hurt Congress’ last-ditch efforts to cobble together an anti- BJP alliance ahead of the upcoming polls. Apart from other players, such as Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, it was AAP that was vehemently opposed to Congress playing the pole position in the opposition alliance. With the blessings of Kejriwal, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann initiated the process of driving a wedge within the I.N.D.I.A. bloc with his sharp attack on Congress. He took a dig at the party on January 1 by saying that the shortest story that a mother can narrate to her child in Delhi or Punjab will be “Ek thi Congress (Once there was a Congress).” In response, Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit, on January 2, responded to Mann by saying that soon, mothers would say that there was a party that could now be found in Tihar Jail. In fact, at the first meeting of the so-called opposition bloc on June 23, 2023, AAP had indicated that it was more interested in itself than an um­brella alliance of opposition parties. It had asked Congress lead­ers to publicly oppose the Centre’s ordinance on the control of administrative services in Delhi. A statement was issued by AAP shortly after the meeting, which said, “Congress’ hesitation and refusal to act as a team player, especially on an issue as important as this one, will make it very difficult for the AAP to be a part of any alliance that in­cludes Congress… Until the Congress publicly denounc­es the Black Ordinance and declares that all 31 of its Rajya Sabha MPs will oppose the ordinance in the Rajya Sabha, it will be difficult for AAP to participate in future meet­ings of like-minded parties where the Congress is a participant.”

The charges against Kejriwal, his ministerial colleagues and associates in this case are serious and involve alleged irregulari­ties in the framing and implementation of the excise policy. Favours reportedly offered to licencees in exchange for bribes include waiver or reduction in the licence fee, besides extension of L-1 licences without approval. L-1 licenses are mandatory for wholesale vending of liquor.

According to ED’s complaint, which is the equivalent of a chargesheet, most people involved in the scam are close to Kejriwal. For instance, it states that Kejriwal had allegedly spoken on video call to Sameer Mahandru, a businessman who is one of the accused in the case, and goaded him to continue working with Vijay Nair, another accused whom the chief minister referred to as “his boy”. The AAP leader, for his part, has dismissed the charge as “fiction”. Nair was AAP’s communications-in-charge and had stayed in a home ad­jacent to the chief minister’s with a gate in between. Nair stayed at that time in a bunga­low allotted to Delhi minister Kailash Gahlot, who had then been living in a private residence at Najafgarh. ED says that Vijay Nair, now in jail, had closely interacted with Kejriw­al, then-Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, also in jail, and had been the point per­son for AAP in the case. “Nair had arranged a meeting of the owner/controller of Indo Spirits Shri Sameer Mahan­dru, with Arvind Kejriwal and when that didn’t mate­rialise, he arranged a video call through FaceTime on his phone for Sameer and Arvind Kejriwal. In the video call, Arvind said to Sameer that Vijay was his boy and that Sameer should trust him and carry on with him,” the ED complaint says, adding that Nair was the middleman between the ‘South Group’ and AAP. Kejriwal’s links with Sisodia need no elaboration. The former deputy chief minister is accused of breaking procedures in fram­ing the new excise policy and causing a huge monetary loss to the state in excise revenues. ED had attached assets belonging to Sisodia, Amandeep Singh Dhall, owner of Brindco Spirits, Rajesh Joshi, who handles ad campaigns, Gautam Malhotra, son of liquor baron and former Akali Dal legislator Deep Malhotra, and others in connection with the probe.

ALSO CLOSE TO Kejriwal is Sanjay Singh, arrested AAP lawmaker allegedly involved in creating a special purpose vehicle to launder the “proceeds of crime”, according to ED, which states that Singh helped in acquiring, possessing, concealing, dissipating and using the proceeds of crime generated from the Delhi liquor scam. Another AAP leader who was sent back to Tihar Jail by the Supreme Court is former minister Satyendar Jain in connec­tion with a money-laundering scam and for allegedly misusing his position as to acquire assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.. In March this year when his bail was rejected by the court, Kejriwal posted on X (formerly Twitter): “He [Jain] is a hero for all Dilli wallas. He made arrangements for provid­ing 24×7 electricity, free electricity, good govt hospitals and mo­halla clinics. Feel extremely sad for him and his family. God bless him.” ED entered the scene in 2022 after CBI asked the former to look into the allegations of money laundering in the alleged cor­ruption case related to the Delhi government’s liquor policy. Ac­cording to ED officials, the excise policy tweaked by the Kejriwal dispensation offered a profit margin of nearly 185 per cent for retail­ers and 12 per cent for wholesalers. According to the agency, half of the profit wholesalers received went to AAP which used it in its election campaigns. AAP had denied all the charges even as a few foreign officials de­manded a free and fair trial for the Delhi chief minister. New Delhi has strongly objected to remarks made by the US and Germany on Kejriwal’s arrest, saying, “India’s legal processes are based on an independent judiciary which is committed to objective and timely out­comes. Casting aspersions on that is unwarranted.”

There are others close to the Delhi chief minister on the ED radar. Most promi­nent is his personal assistant Bibhav Kumar. Kumar is ac­cused by ED of having “de­stroyed or used” 170 phones to conceal evidence of “kickbacks” worth thousands of crores of rupees in the alleged scam. According to the agency, the Inter­national Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) of Kumar’s mobile number was changed four times between September 2021 and July 2022.

Meanwhile, a post by Sunita Kejriwal, Kejriwal’s wife, on the chief minister’s X account on March 28 has attracted a lot of interest with AAP members lapping it up and opponents accus­ing the wife of copying the husband’s theatrics. In the video, she stated that she is relaying a message from her husband: “While my body is in jail, my spirit is with the people of Delhi… Close your eyes, and you will feel my presence around you.”

Kejriwal has successfully played the subaltern game in poli­tics for a while now by courting various groups that did not have much access to political limelight over lunches and other events. He is also widely credited with lowering entry levels for political entrepreneurship. But then, he has proved again and again that promises are worthless because they are to be broken, including his pledge not to become a politician or his declaration not to ally with Congress. To be fair, his metamorphosis has been spectacu­lar: as a social activist, he spoke English and wore shoes, but soon shifted to speaking mostly in Hindi and wearing sandals and tra­ditional Indian attire before cruising to multiple triumphs on the political stage. Wearing a muffler around his head and coughing in Delhi’s polluted winter, he earned the epithet Muffler Man in his early days as a politician. He drove around in his blue Wag­onR and went to his first swearing-in on the Delhi Metro. But he couldn’t keep at it. In the second swearing-in in 2015, he travelled by car to Ramlila Maidan. As his ambitions grew to win in other states, he failed to sustain his ‘common man’ image.

True, his ambush-style politics has taken the AAP chief far in politics in a short period. So far. Now, he faces his biggest challenge yet.

AAPalternative politicsArvind KejriwalBhagwant MannDelhi CMDelhi liquor scamEnforcement DirectorateManish Sisodia