The Bangalore Metro Reporter
AAM AADMI PARTY MISSES SOUTH INDIA! KEJRIVAL’S NEW PARTY IS NORTH INDIAN CENTRIST.
Arvind Kejrival has formally launched his political party and named it as Aam Admi Party. From the name of the Party to the members of the national Council, it is full of North Indian names. In a way Kejriwal has completely ignored the South India in his political pursuit.
Kejriwal who was in the forefront of Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption Movement, had always nursed political ambition. He had successfully converted India Against Corruption as India Against Congress and he led the campaign against Congress in Hissar Loksabha by-elections, when the IAC was catching momentum. He even made Anna Hazare to declare that he will campaign against Congress in the next general election.
After Anna Hazare’s movement lost it steam and there were differences of opinions among themselves about the political fight, Kejriwal had announced the launch of a national political party on Gandhi Jayanthi. Now, Kejriwal has officially launched his political Party with himself as the national convener. It is another matter that Anna Hazare has reconstituted his core team of IAC dropping Kejriwal. After Kejriwal had officially announced the formation of AAP, Anna Hazare who had earlier distanced himself from his political activities, changed and said that he will campaign for AAP candidates!
Arguably, Kejriwal’s AAP has become a north Indian centrist party limited to the Hindi heartland. The name Aam Admi does not sound anything in South Indian States. Foe a villager in Karnataka - AP - Kerala, Tamil Nadu or Puducherry the name Aam Admi has no meaning. Even though they know the regional parties, they also know well about the national parties like Indian National Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Communist Parties etc. But, Aam Admi sounds Greek to them.
It is another matter that people have heard about the word ‘aam admi’, the election slogan of the Congress in 2004 and 2009. The Congress used the slogan “Congress ka haath, aam admi ke Saath” (Congress hand is with the people.) Even here, the Congress did not use the hindi slogan in the South and used its local translated version.
And Kejriwal has taken the ‘aam admi’ word from the Congress and named his party. Apart from the North Indian centrist Party, the national Council also does not figure people or even self proclaimed leaders from South India. At the most one can detect a couple of names of South Indian accent. To be precise Kejriwal has acted as if South India does not exist. One would have expected at least one name each from the Southern states.
It is natural as Kejriwal or for that matter Anna Hazare’s IAC too had completely ignored Southern States. Their centre of agitation was limited to Mumbai and Delhi. Moreover, they have concentrated their ‘struggle against corruption’ against only Congress and that too in urban metro cities. They never talked about rotten corruption in states ruled by the non-congress parties. For example, they never talked about corruption in Karnataka which was at peak making the state occupy the No.1 position in the country. When Anna Hazare visited Bengaluru during the height of their IAC movement, B.S.Yeddyurappa, the then Chief Minister was accused of many serious corruption related scams. In fact, the then Lokayukta Santosh Hegde was one of the prominent members of Anna’s core committee and he had finalised the Report on illegal mining in the state and named Yedurappa as a beneficiary of heavy payment from the illegal mining lobby. But Anna Hazare, or Kejriwal for that matter, never uttered a word against corruption by the state BJP government led by Yedurappa! Similarly, Anna had praised Gujarath CM Narendra Modi who had not appointed Lokayukta in Gujarat for the last nine years! And Anna was fighting for establishment of Lokpal at the centre!
In a way, the IAC targeted selected leaders for exposure. Most of the front line and self proclaimed leaders in IAC have their own NGOs receiving foreign funds, including that of Kejriwal.
After the IAC movement weakened, Kejriwal out of political ambitions announced the formation of a new political party. People were not amused. To provide proper build up to the official launch of the party, Kejriwal started exposing selected targets. As he had become a darling of a section of the media, he grabbed the limelight when he exposed Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra for having made hundreds of crores in a matter of three years by abusing his relation with Sonia Gandhi. The scam died a natural death with Kejriwal not willing to file cases. But the exposure provided him with larger than life image in the media. His second target was Salman Khurshid, the law minister whom he accused for misappropriation of about 80 lakhs grants meant for Welfare of handicapped people through his family Trust. This too provided heavy media Coverage. Later he exposed BJP President Nitin Gadkari’s ‘Purti’ scam and damaged his image. A couple of days later he took on the Reliance Company scams, exposing how the company had made hundreds of crores through their political bribery.
In fact, Kejriwal’s exposures were nothing but hit and run cases. Except Gadkari who is facing threat to his position, nothing has come out of the other scams exposed by him. After managing huge media image, he chose to formally launch his aam admi party and seems to have limited his knowledge of the country to the North India. He has completely left out South India from the purview of the AAP.
This was not unexpected. Kejriwal or even the IAC had not touched the unimaginable corruption related scandals in Southern states and also non-Congress states. Interestingly a leader of IAC in Bengaluru who contested the council elections from the Graduates Constituency from Bengaluru had put up a very good fight and gathered substantial votes. By any stretch of imagination, this is a credible performance by an individual who simply did not spend on the elections. Now even this gentleman has been ignored by Kejriwal.
Kejriwal perhaps is under the impression that he can launch a political party aimed at fighting the corruption and run it without money. It is to be recalled that Anna Hazare’s IAC was funded by many corporate bodies. There was no way for the IAC to spend lakhs and lakhs on holding agitations, publicity etc. Kejriwal also needs hundreds of crores to prepare the party for the elections. Curiously he is confident that AAP will win more than 350 seats in the elections and form the next government at the centre.
By naming the party as Aam Adami Party, he has showed the lack of understanding of the country. By packing the party with people from Hindi heartland, he has proved that he has no understanding of the geographic, linguistic and plurality of the country. And he wants the people to elect at least 350 AAP candidates in the next parliament elections to make him the Prime Minister so that he can eradicate corruption. That is all!
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