Parliamentary Secretaries Fiasco: How Kejriwal And AAP Have Risked Their ‘Good Governance’ Mandate

What exactly did the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi hope to achieve when it appointed 21 MLAs as parliamentary secretaries and then tried to brazen it out? All it has got for its imprudence is a looming threat over an unprecedented majority it enjoyed in the assembly, with the Delhi High Court setting aside the appointments.

The ball is now in the court of the Election Commission, which will decide whether or not these MLAs should be disqualified. If the Commission does disqualify them, Delhi will have to go in for 21 by-elections. AAP will, no doubt and as is its wont, make political capital by playing victim and blaming the Narendra Modi government, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it has unnecessarily created a problem for itself and squandered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This will be the second time AAP would have done this. In 2013, it came to power in Delhi, with outside support from the Congress Party. It could have used that chance to showcase the alternative governance model it promised. Instead, it got into a needless confrontation with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in Delhi over the Jan Lokpal Bill and quit amid high drama. There were (and still are) so many pressing issues facing Delhi-ites that could have been addressed without the Jan Lokpal. But Arvind Kejriwal had his eyes set on the national stage and ruling Delhi with Congress crutches would have limited him.

After a crushing defeat in Varanasi where he challenged Modi, a contrite Kejriwal and AAP went around apologising to Delhi’s voters and promising never to resign again. Paach saal Kejriwal was the promise given to Delhi’s voters in 2015 and they responded by giving AAP all but three seats in the assembly.

With this kind of a majority, Kejriwal and AAP could have made Delhi a pilot for citizen-focussed, corruption-free governance it claims a patent on and which people across the country are pining for. That pilot could then have been scaled up to other states after, say, a year or so. AAP and Kejriwal could have gone national on the basis of solid performance.

But this would have required at least a year or two of quiet slogging, away from the arc lights. That is clearly something Kejriwal at least is not prepared for. His national ambitions have been stoked again and he had no qualms in short changing Delhi’s voters a second time. Forget paanch saal Kejriwal, Delhi did not even get ek poora saal sirf Kejriwal (one full year of just Kejriwal). Instead, as R. Jagannathan wrote in Firstpost, what Delhi effectively got was paanch saal Sisodia, with Kejriwal deciding he would not hold any portfolio and appointing Manish Sisodia as deputy chief minister.

That could have meant that as chief minister Kejriwal would give broad policy direction instead of getting bogged down in individual departments. Perhaps that was a different way of functioning from other chief ministers. Eventually, however, it turned out to be a convenient arrangement for Kejriwal to once again indulge in his national ambitions. Over the past few months, his attention and energies have been focussed on Punjab, Goa and Gujarat.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that (apart from the broken promise to Delhi’s voters, but, hey, all politicians break promises). AAP and Kejriwal have as much right as any other party to have a national reach.  But what is the appeal with which they are going to voters in the other states? Delhi is no better governed in the one-and-a-half years of AAP government than it was before.

From the beginning AAP has set itself on a collision course with the central government, first with the UPA and now with the Modi government. It has flirted with established norms and procedures and when stopped in its tracks, complained that the central government was not letting it function. This has now become a standard excuse.

Yes, some of the problems of governing Delhi stem from it being under the administrative control of different authorities. But this has always been the case. There have been BJP state governments and non-BJP central governments, Congress state governments and non-Congress central governments. There have been differences between the two and chief ministers have confessed to being handicapped. But never has a state government put all the blame on the centre for its failings the way AAP has. Sheila Dixit’s first term as chief minister (1998-2003) was with the Atal Behari Vajpayee government at the centre. That did not stop her from getting re-elected on the basis of good work, did it?

The current central government cannot be let entirely off the hook. Knowing AAP and Kejriwal’s penchant for histrionics, the central government should have been more politically savvy in dealing with his government. But it was not. There could have been some justification for returning 14 bills to the assembly, but not for denying the state government its say in the appointment of chief secretary and other senior officials. That was carrying things a bit too far. As was remaining silent while former police commissioner B.S. Bassi made statements that could only be construed as political. Delhi had police commissioner-state government clashes earlier; no commissioner has behaved in as partisan a manner as Bassi did.

But AAP could still have used whatever elbow room it had to show that it was learning the ropes of governance. It has some interesting ideas and experiments. The mohalla sabhas to encourage people to participate local governance was one. The mohalla clinics or community clinics in low-income areas to give people access to affordable primary health care was another. Both schemes have come for their share of criticism, but they deserve a chance before being written off.

There is also no denying that the AAP government has taken several creditable steps to improve the education sector. While all attention has been focussed on the clashes with private schools over fee hikes, Sisodia has been quietly trying to reform government schools. Administration has been toned up to ensure better attendance by teachers and improving their performance by giving them access to better training. Parents’ involvement is being increased through improving the school management committees and starting parent-teacher meetings. Budget private schools have got a breather from the provision of the Right to Education Act mandating them to pay government salaries; they now have to pay at least the minimum wage.

And restaurant owners and business persons will attest to real improvement in the ease of doing business.

There was a lot more AAP could have done in Delhi with the majority it had. It could have gone to other states with something positive to showcase. It could have said even with the centre hobbling us we did so much. Right now its appeal is a negative one – we wanted to do this and that in Delhi but the Modi government didn’t allow us. People could turn around and ask, what if Modi hampers you here?

AAP’s majority in Delhi now hinges on the Election Commission. If it decides to disqualify the 21 MLAs, it will be a discredited AAP that goes to the voters, both in Delhi and other states. Even the fate of its experiments will be uncertain. If the Commission decides not to disqualify them (which looks iffy), then AAP needs to do some course correction. It should concentrate on Delhi, making it a pilot for its governance experiments and then scale it up after gaining experience.  It can go to voters in other states and say, if we could do this in Delhi despite the complex administrative arrangements think what we can do for your state where things are not so complicated.