‘Rahul should air views on gas’ Kejriwal plays people’s crony against crony capitalism
WAR OF WORDS Former Delhi CM says revision of gas prices to $8 a unit will benefit Ambani, cause price rise
NEW DELHI: After writing a letter to BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal has written a similar letter to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi over gas pricing issue.
In the letter, released to the media on Monday, Kejriwal alleged that Mukesh Ambani led Reliance Industries had secured higher prices of 4 dollar per unit of gas as against the agreed price of 2.3 dollar. From April, the letter said, the UPA government had agreed to further increase the prices to 8 dollar per unit, which will lead to an undue benefit of `54,000 crore to Reliance Industries.
“This will lead to increase in prices of CNG, fertilizers, electricity and consumer goods,” he wrote. Kejriwal asked what will be Rahul’s stand on the gas prices if his party comes to power and he becomes the Prime Minister.
“This is an important issue and your silence is not good for the country,” he said. Kejriwal further said people are wondering as to why gas prices were doubled just a few months before the general elections. “Is the Congress party in any way being funded by, or getting other favours from, Mukesh Ambani? If so, what is that?”
He said when Delhi’s anti-corruption wing filed a case against Ambani, both Congress and BJP senior leaders raised objections. “Do the two parties have such bonding with Mukesh Ambani?”
Questioning Rahul on the expenses incurred on campaigns, Kejriwal asked who was funding them. “Some say that crores are spent on one rally. Where is this money coming from? Is Mukesh Ambani funding these rallies?”
Targeting union ministers charged with corruption, Kejriwal asked, “Will you give the ticket to your union ministers including Veerappa Moily, Kapil Sibal, Kamal Nath, Salman Khurshid, P Chidambaram and NCP chief Sharad Pawar in the coming elections?” NEW DELHI: Arvind Kejriwal is brashly running a smart campaign. Does that sound like an oxymoron? Maybe, but vox pop has to be aired in the language the people speak.
There’s nothing new about the questions the Aam Aadmi Party leader is asking Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. They’ve been the Left’s catch-slogans against ‘crony capitalism’, which the mainstream media dismissed as dogmatic and out of tune with the times.
The AAP’s arrival on the scene has redrawn the lines of public discourse. The chord the fledgling outfit has come to strike with the common man — from whom it takes its name — is the outcome of mainline parties’ growing disconnect with the people. At the root of it all is their disregard of the widespread anger against a disempowering system attuned to serve the socio-politico elite.
The first signs of it surfaced in 2004 with the BJP’s bombed ‘India Shining’ campaign from which the Congress gained power. Concomitantly, in his very first speech from the Red Fort, Manmohan Singh spoke of reforms with a human face and the need to tone up the delivery system.
Ten years down the line, his party suffers from his failure to apply that wisdom on the ground. The funds the UPA ploughed to the social sector fetched people a share in the benefits of first generation economic reforms. The coalition reaped its benefits in the 2009 polls.
But at the fag end of its second term, that storehouse of goodwill and inclusivity seems emptied by rodents of corruption and mal-governance.
So, while the BJP mascot dwelt on the ABCD of the Congress’s corruption in Punjab, Kejriwal hoisted his M3 plank against Modi, Mukesh (Ambani) and the media in neighbouring Haryana.
He did not spare Rahul or the Congress, probing it as much about the ‘quid pro quo’ between big parties and big business to the detriment of the aam aadmi. But he went for Modi with greater force: “How can a tea-seller have so many helicopters? Up to `50 crore are spent on his rallies. Who funds them?”
Searching questions these. Kejriwal finds expedient to raise them—without much focus on the Gujarat CM’s conduct in the 2002 riots that’s a running theme in Rahul’s speeches — in his quest for issues on which public opinion is one.
Corruption has no religion, caste or creed except greed! It’s a class battle in which people love seeing the rich and the powerful being collared without courtesy. That exactly is the USP of Kejriwal.