The Aam Aadmi Party which had swept the Assembly elections in Punjab barely three months ago is now facing public anger and condemnation because of its messy handling of the Security issues which resulted in the killing of popular Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala recently. The inexperience and the lack of control of the political representatives over both the bureaucracy and the police are apparently the cause of the current situation and unless and until Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann takes immediate corrective measures, things could get worse. Former Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh and the Congress have already launched a scathing attack on the administration and have claimed that the rule of law had ceased to exist in the border state. Congress has demanded the dismissal of the Mann government for failing to protect the singer. The AAP government has also been at the receiving end for withdrawing the security of a large number of people without any proper assessment of the threat perception. It is being charged that after withdrawing the security, the government publicized the issue thereby making the people whose security had been withdrawn as easy targets. While both Mann and AAP Chief Arvind Kejriwal have tried to explain the subject, it is somehow not being received very well.
Earlier, the AAP made a big issue of its honesty when Mann sacked his Health Minister Vijay Singla for demanding illegal gratification before awarding some contracts. Singla is in jail but has accused the AAP leadership of framing him to present an erroneous picture of their transparency and integrity. Shortly after Singla’s dismissal, the Delhi Health Minister, Satyendra Jain has been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on what is being described as money laundering charges. Kejriwal has vehemently defended him and has claimed that Jain was targeted since he was in-charge of the AAP campaign in Himachal Pradesh, which goes to polls later this year. Union Minister Smriti Irani held a press conference to attack Kejriwal and his party for making what she described as “baseless allegations’’ against the Centre. What is happening is that a full-fledged war appears to have broken out between the BJP and AAP and it is unlikely that it was going to end very soon. In Punjab, a perception that has got created is that the government was being run from Delhi by Kejriwal and Mann was just a rubber stamp.
This impression needs to be corrected if the AAP hopes to make further inroads into the politics of the border state which is very sensitive to any kind of interference in its affairs from another state, particularly Delhi. In the past, the Punjab problem was created because the Centre during Indira Gandhi’s time had attempted to foist its own policies on the State. Matters became out of control after Operation Blue Star and led to the assassination of the then Prime Minister. The AAP leadership must ensure that the Punjabi pride does not get hurt anytime if it has to acquit itself well. The BJP on its part shall try to make national security concerns the primary issue in order to keep the AAP in check. Mann must rise to the occasion and ensure that the trust reposed in him by the people of the State is never breached.