A fresh round of fight between the Centre led by the BJP and the Delhi government headed by AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal is currently on. The Centre is bent on passing a legislation that would effectively snatch the Delhi government’s control over the state’s bureaucracy. This fits into a pattern, wherein the Modi government had tried its best to throttle the AAP-led administration through multiple ways over the past several years. The Centre had armed the Delhi governor with more powers and Chief Minister Kerjiwal, after some protests, had to fall in line. The present attempt at usurping more powers from the state government would effectively make the Delhi government a laughing stock. Without sufficient powers in its command, the state government will find the going hard in respect of several of its initiatives on development and people’s welfare.
Delhi, declared as a state 1992, had in the past been a Union Territory, fully under the control of the Centre. Statehood meant Delhi got an elected government, a set of ministers and a legislature to fashion its laws or pass budgets. From that time itself, the Delhi government did not have any authority on the police force, as the central government retained its control by citing the argument that “the national capital is a sensitive region.” Things went on smoothly until the UPA governments ran the central government and the Congress under Sheila Dikshit ran the state government. Thereafter, a scenario of the BJP-led NDA ruling the Centre and the AAP ruling Delhi came into being – which also turned out to be an era of frequent confrontations between the Delhi government and the Centre. Clearly, the Modi government could not tolerate the popularity of the AAP at the nation’s apex, right under its nose; and Kerjiwal and his AAP went on repeatedly winning the elections and humbling the BJP. With the AAP winning one more state – Punjab – the dirty tricks department of the BJP went into an overdrive against Kejriwal. Two AAP ministers are currently in jail, linked to cases of corruption and under other provisions. Cases are before the court. If these are genuine cases, Kejriwal and his party should pay a heavy price as they had won polls on the plank of fighting corruption.
The central government must avoid acting in a partisan manner against the opposition-led governments. Since 2014, it has attempted to have a Congress-Mukht Bharat. It is clear by now that this is impossible. The Congress party outwitted the BJP in Karnataka in the recent polls and a similar scenario is likely in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in the assembly polls by this year-end.
