There is no negativity about AAP: Arvind Kejriwal

The Delhi Chief Minister on AAP’s reverses in recent State elections, EVMs, and the upcoming Delhi municipal polls

April 19, 2017 12:58 am | Updated 07:59 am IST

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during an interview to The Hindu at his residence in New Delhi on Monday.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal during an interview to The Hindu at his residence in New Delhi on Monday.

Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal is convinced that recent elections to the Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand Assemblies were rigged. He says in an interview at the Chief Minister's residence on 6, Flag Staff Road that he doesn’t believe AAP has become unpopular in Delhi, and points to all the work his government has done in the city.  Excerpts from the interview:

A lot of people are asking this question — how come electronic voting machines (EVMs) were okay in 2015 when AAP won 67 of 70 Delhi Assembly seats, and now have a flaw? How do you marry these two positions?

A lot of new evidence [about EVMs] has come in during the last four months. When you say that we did not question EVMs when we got 67 seats, we did not question the victory of the BJP in several States at that time. They [the BJP] won the Lok Sabha elections; we didn’t question that because no evidence was available. 

In the last four months, there have been many reports in States that had gone to the polls about so-called EVM malfunctioning. I see it as tampering. If the Election Commission had inquired into these incidents and given a credible report, people’s confidence would have been restored.

In Pune, an independent candidate says that he did not get a single vote. Where did his vote go? Where did his family’s vote go? The votes of his friends, where did those go? He should have got 30, 40 or 50 votes at least. But there has been no inquiry into this. It’s been brushed under the carpet.

If Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines were attached with all EVMs, would you be satisfied?

If we go back to ballot papers, then we will not get the advantage of the efficiency of EVMs. A voting machine gives you the result in two hours. There can be a via media between the two. Despite the installation of VVPAT machines, there could be rigging at the time of vote counting if the software has been tampered with.

My suggestion is that VVPAT should be made compulsory. Suppose there are 100 Assembly constituencies, 15-20% of constituencies should be randomly picked at the time of counting and [EVM results be] compared with [counting of] VVPAT [slips]. Then you can say the results are okay.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in Bhubaneswar on Sunday that Opposition parties were making EVMs an excuse for defeat.

I would like to remind Mr. Modi that from 2009 to 2014 it was his BJP that had declared war against EVMs. In 2014, once he formed the government, EVMs became okay — how could that happen? [BJP leader] Dr. Subramanian Swamy has written a book on the various ways in which EVMs can be tampered. Now, EVMs are okay because he [Mr. Modi] is in power?

Does the defeat in the Rajouri Garden Assembly seat show that AAP is losing its popularity?

The feedback that I got from Rajouri Garden is that our former MLA, Jarnail Singh, had done a lot for the Sikh community. He wanted to contest the elections in Punjab and the party also decided that he should fight. People got very angry with this [decision] and it did not go down well with the voters there. Our volunteers were told they would teach AAP a ‘lesson’. We had voted for a period of five years; why did he leave? There was a lot of anger.

It was local. It has nothing to do with popularity and will have no impact on the MCD [Municipal Corporation of Delhi] elections. There is a lot of positivity about the work done by the AAP government.

Then what is the reason for negativity?

There is no negativity about AAP in Delhi. On the contrary, the BJP has sucked the MCD dry in the last 10 years. Garbage and mosquitoes are everywhere in the city. There is negativity for the BJP; they are the ones facing anti-incumbency after holding power in MCD for the last 10 years.

I want to tell your readers that if you vote for the BJP, then you can be sure that the garbage will remain as it is. You will not be able to get rid of mosquitoes, dengue and chikungunya.

Basically, the AAP government controls four departments: electricity, water, education and health. We have done lots in these four areas. Everyone says we have done more than we promised. Government schools have been improved; we have not allowed any increase in fees in private schools. Government hospitals have been fixed. Mohalla clinics are being praised globally. All medicines are free in government hospitals. Electricity rates have been halved. Water is being provided to 309 colonies where there was no water for 20 years. Water is also free. People are very happy with the work of the Delhi government. People are very angry with the BJP and the MCD.

There is a perception that you are using the Delhi government as a springboard for national politics.

The whole country is looking at the good work being done by the Delhi government. In Delhi, 400 units of electricity cost ₹1,370, in Gujarat where the BJP is power, it costs ₹2,700. In Bombay, where the BJP is in power [it costs]₹4,000. So, the point is that people are looking towards Delhi and how it’s being governed. Either these parties should reform themselves or people will say let AAP come to power.

Recently, the CBI has begun a preliminary enquiry against one of your Ministers, Satyendar Jain…

Also against Manish [Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister] and myself.

One of your Ministers was also charged with possessing a ‘forged’ degree. Are you satisfied with your choice of people?

We are the only party to take strong action if any charge has been made against any of our Ministers even if there is prima facie evidence against them. There cannot be any company or organisation where 100% of the people are sadhus or mahatmas. Our party is growing; people are joining. But our party is different from others in that if any evidence is available, we take action against the individual concerned.

But they spread lies — four FIRs have been registered against Manish, and you will laugh when you hear of their contents. One FIR says that we gave an ad to Facebook without issuing a tender. Are there four Facebooks in the world, how can you issue a tender? There is only one Facebook in the world.

Such types of false cases have been filed against us. Twenty of our MLAs have been arrested. We have demolished five mafias in Delhi that the BJP and Congress were running including the tanker mafia. This was a multi-crore operation. We also broke the back of the education mafia. Manish did not allow private schools to increase fees in the past two years. All of them are against us and that’s why they have got FIRs registered against Manish. Satyendar Jain broke the drug mafia. These people were used to getting forged bills passed for medicines in hospitals. There were also mafias of electricity companies and contractors.

Contractors would bring inflated bills; a little they would ‘eat’, a little Ministers would ‘eat’. We have saved all this money. A flyover was to have been built for₹325 crore; we completed it in ₹200 crore. Earlier, if the sanctioned cost was₹325 crore, billing would be of ₹1,000 crore.

If we had started ‘eating’ money from these people — gave a little to the Congress, a little to the BJP and a little delivered to the CBI — no case would have been registered against us. Everybody would say, what a Chief Minister — he keeps everyone happy!

But the allegation against [former Minister] Jitender Tomar was different — of forging his degree.

Yes, but we removed him. Similarly, there should be action against Smriti Irani and Modiji [on the issue of degrees]. Why only against us? We have taken action against our Minister. There are question marks on the degrees of Modiji and Smriti Irani. Why no action against them?

AAP came to power and prominence through the anti-corruption agitation and years down the line we still don’t have a Lokpal.

We have passed it.  The Delhi Assembly passed the Jan Lokpal Bill, for which we had fought, as soon as it was prepared. The Central government is not passing it; it is sitting on it.

We are talking about the Central Lokpal also.

It is very unfortunate that they talk of corruption but have not appointed a Lokpal, saying there is no Leader of Opposition. In Delhi Assembly there are three people in the Opposition, we gave them the position of Leader of Opposition, they should also believe in democracy. They [the Centre] should do the same and appoint a Lokpal.

Do you think the anti-corruption movement that was there has now retreated into the background?

I say that the issue is important. Even today people are tired of corruption. In Delhi, when our 49-day government was formed, we had cracked down on corruption, which people remember till today. Again our government was formed and in the first three months we cracked down (on corruption) through the Anti Corruption Branch (ACB) but the Central government snatched away our ACB. The Central government’s message is this: either vote for BJP or if you give your vote to any other party, we will not let their government run.

This is not right for the country, democracy and the people. Despite ACB being snatched away, we brought in so many reforms in our system through computerisation that the latest report of CVC says that in Central government corruption has gone up by 67% but in Delhi government 81% corruption has been reduced. Corruption has been reduced in our government because in the transport department, we made lot of processes online, including the SDM offices.

Are personalities more important than policies in our country?

Both things are there. Personality is always important. Leadership is important in politics. If people have some dreams, they want to see who will fulfil those dreams, who will take care of [their] problems. Not only nationally but even at the local level, some MLAs are very popular in their areas while some MLAs are not that popular. Individuals do matter and personalities matter in politics. But if issues are sidestepped due to personalities, then that is very dangerous.

The Gandhi family in Congress, there’s Mr. Modi in the BJP, and there is Arvind Kejriwal in AAP. How important are you to your scheme of things? Is the personality of Arvind Kejriwal today more important than AAP?

That is not true. In AAP, we take all decisions collectively.

What lessons have you learnt from the elections that you fought in Punjab and Goa?

The lesson that we have learnt is that something has to be done about EVMs. There are a lot of problems with EVMs. We couldn’t have lost the elections in Punjab. My political experience is limited but whatever experience I have, I have not seen an election like this before and don’t expect to see another such election again, where I have witnessed such frenzy among people.

So you are saying it was a rigged election?

It was a completely rigged election. Three States, U.P., Uttarakhand and Punjab, all three have been very badly rigged.

Do you have any evidence?

All the things that are coming out now. There are some villages in Punjab [where]15 [AAP] volunteers each have been working for the past six months and where we have got just two votes. Those 15 volunteers are saying where have our votes gone, where have our family’s votes gone? And this includes some villages where people didn’t allow the Akalis to enter the village, beat them up and chased them away. There we are getting two votes while the Akalis have got 300 votes. This is not possible. Even people there are saying how did this happen, where did the votes go?

So, Goa was a genuine loss?

We were not expecting much in Goa; we didn't have much hope.

From your learning in Punjab and Goa, will you be contesting elections in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh?

At this point it is too early to say. At present all our energy is devoted towards the municipal elections.

We are moving towards the 2019 elections. You have had contacts with Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee and other national leaders. Will there be a grand opposition alliance ahead of the 2019 elections?

Actually, there are two things. One is power politics and the other is issue politics. People are important. Snatching power through different means is not important. Saying anything about 2019 at present is difficult because we live by the day. Let us see what happens in the coming days.

How do you view the rise of Yogi Adityanath in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh and what does it mean for common people there?

People have to decide. In a democracy, people are supreme. Let’s see how he performs.

This incident that happened in Rajasthan, the lynching of Pehlu Khan, what kind of message does it send out to people and how does it reflect on governance in Rajasthan?

The violence across the country is not right. Peace is necessary. If there is no peace and no law and order, it is a bit worrisome. If it happens in the country that this is the only ideology and if you don’t follow this ideology then you will be abused or killed, that should not happen. Otherwise, how will humanity progress, how will ideas progress, how will human development take place? Human development can be there only when there is multiplicity of ideas, multiplicity of ideologies and there all kinds of people and different views. It is a bit worrisome the way violence has crept into language and conduct, and actual fights have started. When there is violence and someone is killed, then it is seen from which religion and caste the person who has died belonged to, and the one who killed was from which party. If the perpetrator is from the BJP, then he will not be penalised. This is wrong. This means that IPC and CrPC have collapsed.

You have been the Delhi CM for over two years now and there have been a lot of differences with the Central government and you have demanded full statehood. In the current scenario, is the city of Delhi a workable proposition?

In the present state, who is suffering? Delhi is suffering and its people are suffering. I will give you one example, in last year’s Budget we had allocated around ₹250 crore for putting up lights at all dark spots in the city that are very unsafe for women. The MCD, run by the BJP, passed a resolution that they would not allow poles to be put up on MCD roads with Delhi government’s money. This is dirty politics. Who is the sufferer? The women of Delhi. We are not asking them for any money, we are giving the money and we are installing the poles and doing everything. They only thought that we will get credit and votes if our money is used for installing the poles, so they didn’t allow this to happen by passing a resolution. We had passed ₹1,500 crore so that all houses in Delhi get tap water, and water tankers should be done away with. So, I gave them a target of December 31, 2017. I said lay pipelines in entire Delhi within two years. They [BJP corporators] passed a resolution that they would not allow pipelines to be laid on MCD roads. They also passed a resolution that no MCD work would be done through the MLA fund. This is dirty politics and this is not right. This kind of politics is not right. You fight elections and do politics in elections and whoever wins in the politics of elections will do the work. Everyone can work together.

There is no democratic control over [Delhi] Police and Delhi Development Authority. The L-G has all the powers and the L-G is not accountable to anyone. This is dictatorship. Elected government has no powers. Have you ever heard that an elected government has no powers?

I challenge the BJP to tell us if they have done one good thing in MCD in the last 10 years. Our biggest focus is on keeping Delhi clean and that is the aim. Why is it important that AAP should win MCD? Not because we want to win any election but we want to clean Delhi. Cleaning a city is not rocket science. Go to any European country, the cities are so clean there. Float an international global tender and many companies will come for cleaning the city. Solid waste management is something from which you can earn money and on the contrary they are spending money on it. I’m very confident that within one year of coming into power in MCD we will spruce up Delhi. So people should vote for Aam Aadmi Party to clean up Delhi.

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