The Lieutenant-Governor’s office has become the BJP’s second headquarter and he is the party’s polling agent.”
“The Delhi Police Commissioner is acting like the BJP’s unofficial spokesperson.”
“DANICS and IAS associations in Delhi have become full-fledged B teams of the BJP.”
The three statements from Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the past one year on Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi and Delhi bureaucrats sum up Delhi’s political scene under his rule. But at the root of this escalating political tussle between the AAP government and the BJP-led Centre is the city’s peculiar administrative status.
A democratically elected government in Delhi doesn’t have control over administrative appointments and civic agencies like the DDA and Municipal Corporations, and the police do not come under their direct control either. Its power is shared between the Centre and the Delhi government.
While the government has been able to deliver on their promises in education, health, power and water sectors, the increasing public spats between the AAP government and the L-G (read the Centre) over control on the three subjects have put citizens in the crossfire.
It started with a discord over file movement and the transfer and posting of bureaucrats and snowballed into a full-statehood issue.
And the state government, which has an advertisement budget of Rs. 561 crore, launched a scathing attack on the Centre through its newly coined slogan, “Wo parehsan karte rahe, hum kaam karte rahe” cementing its image of being the victim and the Centre as the hindrance.
Arvind Kejriwal, to end the ongoing duel, thought of a referendum on the full-statehood issue in July last year, taking a cue from Greece.
He asked various departments to check the legal feasibility. But officials threw the rulebook at him saying there was no provision of seeking ‘referendum’ in the Constitution.
The opposition and critics dismissed the referendum as a political gimmick but what really defines the AAP is its embedded political philosophy of public participation. In fact, the AAP formed a minority government with Congress’ outside support in 2013 only after a public poll on the decision.
Even in his first speech as the Chief Minister on December 28, he said “We are not here to grab power but to put governance back in to the hands of the people.” And on February 14 last year, when Mr. Kejriwal took oath as the Chief Minister for the second time, he reiterated the same.
Seeking referendum on issues like full-statehood, asking people to give views on implementation of odd-even policy, Swaraj Budget, may have turned the AAP into a populist one, whose every decision is preceded by soliciting public opinion, but it has managed to achieve participatory governance.
AAP’s local governance through mohalla sabhas, neighbourhood bodies empowered to monitor public performance and make decisions on a variety of issues was similar to Sheila Dikshit’s Bhagidari concept and the BJP’s Resident Welfare Committees. Learning from its rivals’ shortcomings, AAP didn’t add another layer to RWAs structure and unlike previous government, the decision on how and where to spend the MLA fund rests with the people.
Not just through mohalla sabhas and Janta Darbar, Mr. Kejriwal is reaching out to the people through social media and apps. Almost every department has launched its own app and officials say that many of them have been received well. “We do not want people to come to us for their work. Governance should be just a click or a tap away,” said deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia. To streamline the paperwork, the government also abolished 200 types of affidavits, which were earlier required for different documents — ration cards, income certificate, transport permits — from December 1 and replaced it with self-attestation. Officials say that almost 75 per cent of the man hours that were required to sift through the resulting ‘cumbersome’ paperwork have been reduced.
All in all, it seems, the government is focussing more on the statehood issue and as Mr. Sisodia puts it, “we are trying to untangle the mess previous government left behind,” but the constant political wrangling between Centre and AAP has cast a shadow on their governance and the works taken up are hanging in the middle.
