Arvind Kejriwal is not the first politician to lie.
He is also not the last who values masses’ votes above everything else.
That he is dishonest is no exception; has a use-and-throw approach to his friends which goes with his job; and if he is not averse to play the religion card, again it could be equated with any other politician.
But where he is different from most but for say Sonia Gandhi now or Jawaharlal Nehru in the past is how he reaches the public without any wart or blemish.
There is nothing which reaches us through mass media that mirrors him or his party Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in poor light.
Nowhere is he asked if his MLAs or leaders could’ve incited the Delhi Riots of 2020; or how his jail minister could be behind the bars for months now and yet is un removed; how freebies help the finances of his distressed states; or how Covid-19 exposed his lies on the medical infra in the Capital, never mind the enormous money he spends on ads to keep the media beholden to him.
This pattern has been brought into play again after the recent MCD and assembly elections.
Hidden truth of MCD & Assembly Polls
We have massive images and headlines celebrating how AAP displaced the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the MCD elections where the latter had lorded over for a decade and half.
Or how the AAP has become a national party in less than a decade’s time as Kejriwal, beaming broadly, has informed us more than once.
Buried somewhere between stories is the info that AAP lost deposits in all the 67 seats it contested in Himachal Pradesh which, as Indian Express sheepishly informs us, was no less because Mr Kejriwal was busy putting all his energy in Gujarat!
Yet there is more to it than just the classic heads-I-win; tails-you-lose syndrome here. Or where you take credit for your gains but blame anyone below the sky for your losses.
For instance, Himachal Pradesh isn’t the only state where everyone of AAP’s contestants ended up losing his deposit.
So was the case in Uttar Pradesh earlier this year where in all 349 seats AAP contested, it forfeited its deposit.
Or in Uttarakhand, again this very year, where AAP lost its deposit in 68 of the 70 seats it fought for.
So, AAP not just failed to win any seat in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh this year but also lost its deposit in all but two of the 486 combined seats it contested.
It’s also a good enough moment to remember what happened in Gujarat now and Goa earlier. It lost 176 of 181 seats it contested in Gujarat; in Goa it lost 37 of the 39 seats it aimed at.
In year(s) gone by, each of AAP’s candidates in Haryana (45 seats) and Jharkhand (26) had likewise lost their deposits.
But it’s not mere losses or the case of losing its deposits in hundreds but a handful of constituencies. The chart below would show that in a majority of such seats, it polled less votes than NOTA (None Of The Above).
Let’s also pan our attention on the last column of the chart above—it shows that in terms of vote share too, AAP managed a double digit (12.92%) only in Gujarat. In Uttar Pradesh (0.38%), Uttarakhand (3.31%), Himachal Pradesh (1.1%) or Goa (6.77%) it had cut a sorry figure.
There is this chest-thumping on how AAP had achieved a national party status in a record time. The truth is, no less tha five parties, formed after independence, achieved this status in far less time, including the BJS and BJP.
In MCD polls, nowhere have we read that the AAP fared miserably in those very constituencies which some of its top leaders call it their home. The AAP has suffered a near total collapse in these “home-zones” of Manish Sisodia, Satyendr Jain, Atishi Marlena, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Kailash Gehlot, Gopal Rai and Amanatullah Khan.
In those areas where Muslims dominate, it’s Congress which has done better than the AAP.
In Seelampur, which made such gory headlines during the Delhi Riots of 2020, AAP has virtually been routed.
The Conspiracy of Silence
Is it only ads to media which allows Mr Kejriwal and his AAP to get away with, let’s not say murder, but anything?
After all AAP has also got votes in the two places it’s in power—Delhi and Punjab.
I also don’t think its just illegal Rohingyas or Bangladeshis in Delhi which are a critical factor in his wins.
(Though only around 50% of votes cast, be it in MCD or assembly polls, do suggest that largely urban voters stay away from polling booths in the Capital.)
Kejriwal, to my mind, is helped by freebies and cohorts in media, and that a few other parties now stand discredited.
It has flourished in the vacuum of Congress.
Maybe there is more to it than the mere propping which Kejriwal received early in his career through the Ford Foundation, be it his NGOs or the Magsaysay Award.
The Ford Foundation, despite its cloak of morality, is now well-known to have been used by the CIA to cause disruption in other countries.
This issue has never been sufficiently probed by the Indian media.
It’s conspiracy of silence is deafening.
There is saying that you know one who is in power by those you are not allowed to criticize.
In the case Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party it does fit the bill.
