OPINION

“It would be necessary for Indians – Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Parsis and all others to whom India is home – to recognise a common flag to live and die for,” – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi       

On July 22, 1947 a resolution was moved in the Constituent Assembly for the adoption of the Tricolour, as we see in the present form, as the National Flag. The discussion on the flag, which was initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru, had several members expressing sentiments, each defining what the flag meant for them.

While it would be a tall order to recall all, some very representative thoughts much be considered specially in time as hoisting of Tricolour has become part of politics. Soon after Nehru introduced the resolution for adopting the Tricolour, erudite scholar Dr S Radhakrishnan made a beautiful exposition about make-up of the flag.

The learned intellectual, who later became second President of republic, said, “In these difficult days it depends on us under what banner we fight. Here we are putting in the very centre the White, the white of the Sun’s rays. The white means the path of light. There is darkness even at noon as some People have urged, but it is necessary for us to dissipate these clouds of darkness and control our conduct-by the ideal light, the light of truth, of transparent simplicity which is illustrated by the colour of white.

Soon after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was founded in 2013, during a television debate its then main ideologue Yogendra Yadav was asked about the ideological moorings of the organisation. He had said that they believed in extracting the best from every ideology. A party which had come into existence to cleanse Indian politics soon took to the vice ways of existing political parties and started to play the caste and communal cards right from 2014 Lok Sabha polls.   

Yogendra Yadav himself became Salim in the quest of Muslim votes on the Gurgaon seat. His compatriot journalist Ashutosh became Ashutosh Gupta in search of Muslim votes while contesting from the Chandni Chowk Lok Sabha seat in the same election. Now deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, facing charges of scam has become a descendant of Maharana Pratap, who took on the mighty Mughals.

Under investigations from the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED), Sisodia last week alleged that the BJP had offered to shut all cases against him if he quit AAP and switched sides. “I have received BJP's message – ‘break away from AAP and join BJP, we will get all CBI-ED cases closed’. My reply to BJP - I am a Rajput, a descendant of Maharana Pratap. I will cut off my head but I will not bow down in front of corrupt conspirators. All the cases against me are false. Do whatever you want to do,” Sisodia had claimed in a post on micro-blogging site Twitter. 

Around 2011-12, when the Manmohan Singh government was facing a plethora of corruption charges, largely on the account of allocation of 2G spectrum and hosting of Commonwealth Games, then Congress spokesperson Janardhan Dwivedi had famously said, “Congress had said earlier also that all such cases should be investigated and enquired properly and law will take its own course.”

Among the cheer-leaders of the anti-corruption campaign were a few social sector activists namely Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia. This campaign propelled them to the seat of power in the national Capital, unseating a very successful and fairly clean chief minister Sheila Dikshit. While Dikshit is credited with building infrastructure which is sustaining the national Capital today, the charges against her in the alleged Commonwealth Games scam came a cropper.

It’s just been a decade and now the duo of Kejriwal-Sisodia are themselves being investigated for corruption. One of the senior ministers from their team, Satyender Jain has been languishing behind bars for some time now in a money laundering case. Unlike the Congress in 2011-12, the Aam Aadmi Party has not shown the political finesse of saying, “law will take its own course.”

While we are still trying to figure what put legislative functioning of Arvind Kejriwal government into abeyance in Delhi for the past four years, a flurry of attacks by them have further muddied the water. Last we learnt that Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia stonewalled tabling of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report in the house for four consecutive years.

Now that the report is in the public domain, one learns what made Kejriwal government hold back the reports. The CAG reports pertaining to the years 2017-18 to 2020-21 point to several irregularities of serious nature in the accounts and finance across various departments of Delhi government.

A cursory look at the report would show that every PSU under Delhi government was incurring loss, which is in direct contrast to government's claims that under them Delhi was financially vibrant. As per the report, Delhi government power companies losses stood at Rs 2,561 crore. The Delhi Transport Corporation incurred a loss of Rs 29,143 crore while the loss for Delhi Jal Board was Rs 27,660 crore, the CAG papers indicate.

That the Delhi Government did not table the reports on its functioning by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in the state assembly for four years in a row shows how legislative functioning has hit a bottomless pit in the national Capital. That the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government, known for its care a damn attitude towards legislative responsibilities, did not table the report is not surprising.

What worries is that the opposition benches, constituting of the BJP MLAs, also did not care to demand its tabling. The surprises don’t end there. There is an assembly secretariat, headed by the Speaker, custodian of legislative powers and responsibilities, too went along the government in their devious act to subvert the processes which makes assembly proceedings meaningful.

And lastly the role of the former Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal in overlooking this act of subversion of democratic functioning for four continuous years. According to recent newspaper reports, it took four letters from the present L-G Vinai Kumar Saxena’s office for the government to table the 10 reports panning over four years finally in the monsoon session of the Delhi Assembly on July 5 this year.