OPINION

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s address in Delhi Assembly on the motion of thanks to the Lieutenant Governor’s address has gone viral, thanks to the IT cell of the BJP and its cohorts. Kejriwal is being lambasted for not making a recent Bollywood release Kashmir Files tax free for viewing in the cinema halls of Delhi.

Courtesy the very enterprising IT cell’s initiative, and alittle realizing the damage they were doing, a large section of the social media citizens of the national Capital got a full eight-minute video to watch, where Kejriwal roasted his political rivals and pointed to them how clueless, rudderless and adrift from reality was the leadership of Delhi unit of the BJP.

The reference to Kashmir Files came when Kejriwal referred to the ruckus created by the opposition benches during the Lt Governor’s address a day earlier. Pointing to the placards carried by the small team of eight BJP MLAs during their protest inside the House, Kejriwal said that some demanded shutting down of the liquor shops and others making Kashmir Files tax free.

The postponing of the MCD polls inadvertently has given a breather to the Congress high command. If the state elections commission would have decided to go ahead with the polls in April, which were postponed at the last moment, the grand old party would have been staring at another rout.

This would have meant another defeat in Delhi, where the Congress first lost turf to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), since the winter of 2013. This would have further bruised the beleaguered party high command. With AAP having moved the Supreme Court to hold polls on time, the Damocles’ sword continues to hang, lest the apex court ask the poll body to hold elections.

In the dissident group of 23 Congress leaders, popularly known as G-23, there are four names from Delhi alone – Kapil Sibal, Sandeep Dikshit, Arvinder Singh Lovely and Yoganand Shastri. Veteran Shastri has since joined the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Though Delhi did not go for assembly polls, it, however, cannot remain unaffected by the results in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur and Goa. The ruling party of Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), has registered victory in Punjab with a thumping majority and is all set to form the government.

AAP’s presence in Punjab has been there since the party’s inception in 2013, as it had surprised many by winning couple of Lok Sabha seats in 2014. During the 2017 Vidhan Sabha polls its performance confirmed that 2014 results were not a flash in the pan. It ended up second pushing the Akali Dal to the third position.

However, the point to be noted that is that despite much media hype, and declaration of the Chief Ministerial candidate much in advance, the party failed to open its account in Uttarakhand and did not rise to the expectations in Goa either. This is surprising as these two states were expected to have better degree of acceptance for AAP’s small state governance model than Punjab.

It was never expected to do much in Uttar Pradesh and expectedly did not open its account in the state. The point to be noted is that in both Delhi and in Punjab, it has replaced Congress as the ruling party and is still to usurp a BJP-ruled state.

While commuting in Delhi one has felt increasingly miserable in the past few years; thankfully now research reports have also appeared that indicate that poor road conditions in the national Capital has led to sluggish traffic conditions.

According to these reports traffic in Delhi moves at half the speed of what the roads are designed for. The major arterial roads in Delhi are designed to achieve a driving speed of 50-70 km per hour and the regulated speed, as decided by the traffic police, is 40-55 km per hour.

However, survey by agencies like the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) among others, have observed that the average speed on these roads now is 26-27 kilometres per hour. This means that a commuter in Delhi takes almost double the time to travel to the destination wasting precious fuel and also man hours.

Worse, traffic on the weekends is sometimes slower than the weekdays on the account of large number of personal vehicles coming onto the roads. The congestions on the roads of Delhi are on two counts, one absence of a robust public transport system and two sluggish pace of the work undertaken by the government agencies.

Medieval poet and Bhakti movement saint Ravidass must not have ever thought that seven hundred years after he departed from this planet, his name would go ‘viral’. The elections in India are capable of bringing back anything from the deep dungeons of history to the surface making it part of political discourse, as happened in the case of Sant Ravidass last week.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted on Tuesday night last week that in Delhi, government offices would remain shut as a public holiday has been declared to celebrate Ravidass Jayanti. This sent Delhi into quiet turmoil specially the managements of schools and colleges.

The educational institutions which have opened after a long hiatus remaining closed for months together first on account of Covid then pollution and then Omicron variant, twiddled thumb on what to do as it was not very clear if the schools and colleges too have too remain closed. This also gave rise to the query who Sant Ramdass was, whose birthday was suddenly sought to be celebrated by Delhi government.