BJP’s funda of asking 5 questions to Kejriwal

By Deepak Parvatiyar

February 3, 2015

What sense does it make for the Bharatiya Janata Party to ask questions to the rival Aam Aadmi Party, which the latter prefers not to answer?

While some of the daily posers such as “Why did Arvind Kejriwal take support of Congress despite having promised not to take support earlier?” sound frivolous, there are a few that indeed cast serious aspersions on the AAP and its leader Arvind Kejriwal. Consider some such samples:

* What is the relationship between Kejriwal and convicted and underground Naxals?
* Why has Kejriwal given a ticket to Amanatullah Khan (Okhla) who is a known associate of 2008 Delhi and Ahmedabad bomb blast accused Zia-ur-Rahman?
* Didn’t you find volunteers to ask for votes in Delhi, BJP asks AAP. Explain the link to foreign volunteers.
* Kejriwal claims that he collected Rs 5666 crore by VAT but later we found that he collected just Rs 2033 crore. So why did he lie?
* Why did Arvind Kejriwal give subsidies to bug electricity companies instead of passing relief directly to the consumers?

Each of the above mentioned questions is fraught with serious charges. Yet, does the BJP really want the AAP to answer its questions? To be more specific, in case the Lotus is sure that these questions are substantiated by facts and figures then what prevents its government at the Centre to:
a) Institute an investigation on these charges through the law enforcing agencies?
b) Move the court against the AAP and Kejriwal for a legal scrutiny?

Does it make any sense asking someone whether he is a thief or not? This reminds one of a defiant Ram Jethmalani – an eminent criminal lawyer with political interest, who used to ask 10 questions daily for a month to the then Prime Minister, late Rajiv Gandhi, on the latter’s alleged involvement in the Bofors scam. Rajiv ridiculed Jethmalani saying “I do not respond to every dog that barks”. To this the peeved lawyer had remarked: “Dogs bark when they see a thief.”

The action is being replayed again after almost a quarter of a century – the BJP playing the “barking dog” this time while the AAP is being projected as the thief!
The AAP has retorted by saying that it would not respond to such questions as the saffron party’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi “ran away” from its challenge for an open debate on all issues.

Serious flaws in BJP’s manner of asking questions

There are some serious flaws indeed in the manner the BJP is raising the questions against the AAP. On one hand while it sounds intimidating, on the other hand it highlights the Lotus’s desperation. Obviously one may ask endless questions but do they really make any impact?

Ostensibly this could not be anything but an out and out campaign strategy of the BJP at a time when pre-poll surveys are giving the Broom an edge over the Lotus in Delhi this election. (Even the RSS mouthpiece Organiser wrote that the BJP is not “in a comfortable ground at present” in Delhi).

Going by the dictum that everything is fair in Love and War, all efforts to influence the public opinion during election time seem justifiable. Fair enough because isn’t it a war out there during elections? Yet, these questions cannot be construed as the classic examples of placing contentious issues at the public domain, for a simple reason that they are nothing more than personal attacks on the rival political party.
If the BJP thought that these questions could trigger a media trial of the AAP then thus far it has failed miserably in its assessment. The AAP’s public standing has gone up after these posers as reflected in the latest media surveys (the BJP might doubt the veracity of such surveys, but the party’s discomfort is quite palpable as reflected in its definite AAP-centric campaigning).

The BJP has been guided by the principle of hammering effect

On face, the BJP seems guided by the principle of hammering effect (used in marketing) to hammer certain notions in the minds of the voters against its targeted rival, the AAP, for electoral mileage.

Yet, such a measure has been necessitated by the absence of issue-based politics and the dominance of personality clashes in elections. The twin decisions of the BJP to induct a rank outsider Kiran Bedi and project her as the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate; and to contest the Delhi poll without a poll manifesto endorse such a notion.

Besides, consider how campaigning in Delhi has taken a bizarre turn with the political debates over issues becoming a passé and replaced by accuses and abuses.

To hit below the belt would be the last thing but when electioneering is personality centric, expect even that to follow soon. The BJP’s daily questions are just one such example. Consider how caustic ad campaigns are making headlines instead of the issues this time in Delhi. The latest such advertisement to make newspaper headlines is where the BJP alluded to Kejriwal’s “updravi gotra (anarchist clan)”, while targeting the latter for his threat to disrupt the Republic Day parade last year when he was the CM of Delhi. (Giving the advertisement a political twist, the AAP now attacks the BJP for insulting Kejriwal’s influential Agarwal community and both the BJP as well as the AAP have now lodged cross complaints against each other with the Election Commission).

The derogatory nature of campaigning is clearly visible

The derogatory nature of campaigning is more visible than ever in Delhi this time. This does reflect the primacy of opportunistic politics over ideology. It may be recalled here that at a time when Gandhian Anna Hazare was toying with the idea of floating a political party in 2012, there was a loud welcome cry from the political fraternity, and a senior Congress leader had gone to the extent of proclaiming: “Ab way isi hammam me kapde utaar kar khade hain na, aa kar dekhiye unko (now he too is standing naked in this hammam [of politics], so come and watch him)”.

Indeed the personalised nature of campaigning as reflected by the BJP posers, the ad wars dare to expose all in the “hammam (Turkish bath)”.

In the melee, other contentious issues of development have indeed taken a back seat and instead of debating their approach towards development, the political parties are hurling accusations and abuses, this election. But by doing so, aren’t they running the risk of taking the ordinary citizens’ wisdom for granted? It is high time the voters decide that enough is enough.