AAP in Punjab is proving to be its own worst enemy
Arvind Kejriwal’s volte face is a blow to the state unit that had built its entire antiAkali narrative on the drug issue
The politics of no-holds-barred tirades has its limits. This is a hard lesson that Arvind Kejriwal has learnt by tendering an unqualified apology to Akali leader Bikram Singh Majithia for the Aam Aadmi Party levelling drug allegations against him in the run-up to 2017 assembly polls in Punjab. For this, the AAP leader was left facing the legal heat in an Amritsar court.
A dramatic retraction now — the result of backroom negotiations — may have got him off the defamation hook, but it has sparked a rebellion in AAP’s Punjab unit that Kejriwal could scarcely have bargained for. In protest, Bhagwant Mann, Sangrur MP and the party’s sole voice in the Lok Sabha, quit as state AAP chief, as did his deputy, Aman Arora.
In a direct and unprecedented challenge to Kejriwal’s authority, the front-ranking AAP state leaders lost no time in speaking out against him. “Meek surrender”, “blunder” and “betrayal of the people of Punjab”, were some of the sulphurous epithets used by them after Kejriwal apologised to Majhitia.
A day after the apology, the firebrand leader of the opposition, Sukhpal Singh Khaira, rallied 18 of 20 AAP MLAs in Chandigarh in a defiant show of strength that stopped just short of declaring a break-up.
This could mean a split in the Punjab AAP with a majority of MLAs breaking away to float a new outfit. Clearly,the party’s Delhibased crisis managers will need all their tact and persuasion to stave off what is turning out to be its worst crisis in Punjab where it had made a stunning debut in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The reasons for the Punjab AAP leaders’ outrage are not difficult to fathom. Kejriwal’s volte face is a blow to a party that had built its entire anti-Akali narrative on the drug issue.
Choosing allegations over agenda, slander over substance, the AAP had directed its venom against Majithia, without producing any tangible proof.
The Akali leader had slapped a string of defamation suits against AAP leaders in the past two years. Kejriwal’s capitulation underscores the pitfalls of AAP’s trademark hitand-run tactics against its rivals which invariably result in defamation cases against him.
But the legal reprieve may not be without political cost. In Punjab, his action has chipped away at the equity that the AAP had earned at the cost of the Akalis. It has also triggered once again the local versus outsider issue.There are signs of a widening schism which may hurt the party’s base that is limited only to the pockets of Malwa region. Predictably, Kejriwal’s apology has come as a booster for the Akalis, who, though pushed to the third slot in the last polls, are aggressively holding rallies against the Amarinder Singh government. The Aam Aadmi Party is really proving to be its own worst enemy.