Sheeshmahal Stings AAP

Over the past week, the Aam Admi Party has been in an overdrive, seeking to counter-attack the Bharatiya Janata Party over the controversy centring on the official residence of former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal which is reportedly festooned with expensive gadgetry and furnishings.

AAP has claimed the Prime Minister’s residence has been built by spending hundreds of crores and demanded it should be open to inspection, calling it a “Rajmahal”. The party leaders marched to Kejriwal’s former 6, Flagstaff Road, residence and demanded to be let in so that its features could be examined.

According to the official Central Vista redevelopment website, the PMO is to be relocated into a new office proposed on the plots 36 and 38 behind South Block. “The Cabinet Secretariat, National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) and a conferencing facility shall also be located together with the PMO. Together, this ensemble will form the ‘Executive Enclave’,” says the website.

So far the project is still in the works and there is no official estimate of costs. On the other, there are several media reports about a Comptroller and Auditor General report detailing cost overruns and cataloguing expensive electronic home appliances, carpets and curtains at the Flagstaff house.

The more AAP is forced to respond to BJP’s political attacks, the more the focus remains on the controversial residence, evocatively labelled “sheeshmahal” by BJP which has set up “models” of the residence and plans to make them a central part of roadshows and electoral publicity.

AAP was caught in a bind after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a hard-hitting attack on AAP and Kejriwal’s so-called Sheeshmahal at his rallies. The residence is subject to thousands of memes and reels and AAP is rightly concerned about the negative impact of the Sheeshmahal imagery.

AAPArvind KejriwalBJPDelhi Assembly ElectionpoliticsSheeshmahalWeb Exclusive