Onus on Kejriwal to prove his party is still incorruptible
The Aam Aadmi Party, born out of an anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare, has landed in deep trouble over allegations of corruption. Two top ministers considered Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s closest lieutenants—Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain—are now under arrest, and investigations are on in several cases involving members of AAP governments in Delhi and Punjab. With Kejriwal accepting the resignations tendered by Sisodia and Jain, expect political rhetoric to skyrocket to stratospheric levels.
The AAP naturally claims foul play and targeted victimisation by the ruling BJP. The latter, which justifiably sees the AAP as a party that can predate upon its prey base, will point to the irony: all these years, the AAP’s unique selling point was its leaders’ professed incorruptibility, offered as a stark contrast to the rest of the field.
The Delhi liquor scam will dent the credibility of the AAP’s claim to be a party with a difference. The burden of giving proof of their incorruptibility is now on Kejriwal. His stakes are high: after Delhi, the voters of Punjab had reposed faith in his party. And the splash they made in Gujarat—gaining national party status—had put wind in the AAP’s sail ahead of 2024. The Congress feels the electoral competition from Kejriwal even more than the BJP at present—everywhere, the latter grows at its cost. At the same time, it shares a fate with the AAP: the ED and the CBI have been snapping at the heels of leaders of other parties as well with unnerving regularity. Critics wonder why only opposition leaders come under the radar of central investigative agencies. Unlike other opposition parties, the Congress was a divided house in criticising Sisodia’s arrest. Its Delhi unit approved of it while central leaders like Jairam Ramesh found it distressing.
This is an issue that can fuse the entire opposition—adding to the optics of a consolidated front against the BJP in 2024—but the two parties are stuck in a rivalrous mode. The allegations against Sisodia—that the Delhi government’s excise policy was tailor-made to bring unfair profits to certain liquor manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers and to facilitate cartelisation of the liquor trade in the city—will need to be proved in court. But being second only to Kejriwal in party and government, his arrest has already taken the game to the next level.