New Delhi: The Swati Maliwal ‘assault’ incident has not taken Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal back to square one but his position today is ‘minus 10’ from where it was, said Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri in an interview with ThePrint Friday.
Predicting that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-Congress alliance would not get a single seat in Delhi, Puri said that what happened with Maliwal is not just a factor for Kejriwal. “It’s a very serious factor,” he said, adding that women are 50 percent of India’s electorate.
“And here is not just any woman. In the official residence of the CM, this lady who happens to be the former chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women, who is now a Rajya Sabha MP, is abused,” the housing and urban affairs and petroleum minister told ThePrint.
Puri said that the first statement from the AAP on the incident came from the party’s senior leader Sanjay Singh and all he said was that Bibhav Kumar, the CM’s aide, misbehaved with Maliwal.
“It’s not just misbehaviour. She has been slapped six or seven times as per her admission, kicked in the chest and the lower parts of her body. This is a case of physical assault, and Mr Kejriwal, when asked, said there are other important issues. Your own colleague, a Rajya Sabha MP, gets beaten up and you say there are other important issues,” Puri said.
“I think Kejriwal is facing an existential crisis…the result on 4 June will reflect that,” he added.
The Union minister also questioned the silence of opposition leaders from the INDIA bloc on the incident. “What is their view on beating a woman? I find that Akhilesh Yadav is very quiet…I see Priyanka Vadra has spoken up for Swati Maliwal. But shouldn’t all these people take up the cause?” he asked.
The minister went on to add, “It’s not a question of whether the person is from AAP or any other party. If some atrocity is committed against women, in the residence of the CM, what security and ethics are we talking about?”.
According to him, this time around in Delhi two things will stand out — the alleged excise policy scam and physical assault on a woman.
“I think the Aam Aadmi Party story is over,” he asserted.
Also Read: Delhi Police arrest Kejriwal’s aide Bibhav Kumar in AAP MP Swati Maliwal ‘assault’ case
‘AAP-Congress alliance has kind of collapsed’
According to the Union minister, the AAP-Congress alliance in Delhi has collapsed already.
“The fact that the Congress president of Delhi, Arvinder Singh Lovely, had to leave the party because he was opposed to the alliance and joined the BJP shows you that it has collapsed,” he said.
Puri said that it’s not just the AAP-Congress alliance, but each of the INDIA bloc’s members is going its own way.
“Until about three months ago, I was taking the INDIA bloc, the INDIA Alliance as I like to call it, very seriously. I thought they would actually sit down among themselves and work out a common programme, seat sharing, etc. But what has happened instead is that each party is going their own way. The TMC is on its own trip, the Left, which is an ally of the Congress, is fighting the Congress in some seats,” he highlighted.
The minister even predicted that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was going to lose both the Wayanad and Rae Bareilly seats.
‘Alliance with Akali Dal tarnished our image’
Asked about the BJP going solo in Punjab, Puri said that he had always advocated that. Talking about the party’s erstwhile alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal, he said, “My fundamental thing is that, in any serious political situation if you become a member of the alliance and you are a junior partner, then you lose your identity. That was the case in Punjab till now.”
He elaborated that Punjab has 13 Lok Sabha and 117 assembly seats. “But we were never contesting more than three out of 13 LS seats, and more than 22-23 out of 117. So, we were at a disadvantage,” he said.
The Akali Dal administration, Puri alleged, was highly corrupt. “… there was a lot of misgovernance. We were junior partners. Hamari chaavi bhi karab hui (Our image was also tarnished)… there was a reputational downside to it” he said.
The minister added that it was not the BJP but the Akalis who broke the alliance. “We were uneasy with it. There were parts of our system in the BJP, which said ultimately, it’s good. Please keep them here otherwise they will become very extreme in their views. The Akalis took advantage of their alliance with the BJP and kept blackmailing us periodically,” he alleged.
The minister said he was very relieved that BJP was fighting on its own in Punjab. “I am also greatly relieved that the BJP is registering its presence in the state. Earlier, we had two seats from Punjab in Parliament. This time, we will have two or three times that,” he added.
The minister also addressed the notion that voter turnout is low this time, dismissing it as “false”. It’s being spread by people who are “delusional and motivated”, he said. “They tend to make statements hoping that some of it will stick.”
Acknowledging that the first and second phases of elections did see a slight dip in voter turnout, Puri said in the third phase it went up and in the fourth phase, the dip was not there.
“In other words, if there was a slight decline, it has evened out and is actually increasing,” he added.
Talking about BJP’s ”íss bar 400 paar” campaign slogan, Puri said it is a sentiment that is very easy to understand. “We got 303 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This time, even if we get 303 plus 10 percent or 303 plus 15 percent, that takes our tally to 330-345, and if our allies get 40-50, that takes us to over 400. We have 38 allies.”
“Our strike rate in the last election was 80 percent. If you have a strike rate of 80 percent, you can’t do very much there,” he added.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)