Kejriwal’s Acts Of ‘Perfidy’
AAP is increasingly exposing its lack of political acumen, and its leader Arvind Kejriwal, his ideological bankruptcy. This first became evident when Kejriwal eagerly acquiesced in the withdrawal of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir without any consultation with the people of the state.
Kejriwal’s second act of perfidy was his stunning silence during the anti-CAA protests. He kept quiet when Jamia students were brutalised by the Delhi Police inside the university. He had nothing to say when masked saffron goons hunted down and broke the skulls of JNU students. And he kept his distance from all anti-CAA protests taking place in Delhi, especially the iconic Shaheen Bagh movement.
Political observers tried to explain it away by the nearness of the Delhi elections, saying that his reticence was to preserve his ‘Hindu vote’ in the slums and jhuggis of Delhi.
They voted for him thinking he was a better alternative to the BJP. AAP won in all the five Muslim-dominated seats (with more than 40 percent Muslim voters) of Okhla, Seelampur, Ballimaran, Matia Mahal and Mustafabad. Indeed, Amanullah Khan, AAP’s candidate from the Okhla constituency, which includes Shaheen Bagh, won by a margin of 71,000 votes, the second-highest in the Delhi legislative elections. The exit polls showed that 69 percent of the Muslim electorate of Delhi voted for Kejriwal’s party. Now we know that he is only the poor-cousin of those he pretended to oppose – intolerant of dissent, egotistical and with rickety notions of secularism.