Is it Really Kejriwal Vs Jung?

Newsclick interviewed Shankar Raghuraman of The Times Of India, on the ongoing series of clashes between Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung. Shankar explains that if we go by the comments of various legal experts, the appointments made by the governor are not only faulty in nature but are also an attack on the democratic nature of the state. He feels that the governor is acting on behalf of the BJP led NDA government, and by creating pressure on the Delhi Government, it is trying to influence voters of Bihar where assembly elections are due this year. AAP is also using these incidents to put all their focus on the issue of full statehood for Delhi and hide their incapability on delivering on their poll promises.

Pranjal: Hello and welcome to Newsclick. We have seen in last few days that in Delhi, there has been a turmoil which has been created. AAP government and the Lt. Governor are in clash with each other. A series of appointments have been made and rejected. To discuss the issue, we have with us Shankar Raghuraman who is an Assistant Executive Editor with Times of India and also a political commentator. Hello Shankar.

Shankar Raghuraman (Shankar): Hi.

Pranjal: We have seen in last few days there were various appointments that have been made. There has been a question of who has the constitutional right to do it. The governor has the right to intervene in the matters of the state directly or it something else?

Shankar: See, as far as question is concerned, clearly lawyers are better placed to answer the question than a journalist like me would be. But, there are several senior constitutional lawyers people like Rajeev Dhawan, KTS Tulsi. Now, some of them you might say aligned with AAP but others are not. There are independent lawyers of considerable repute and many of them have come out in open publicly taking the stand that the Lt. Governor is in a legally in an untenable position on this issue. But I think, the far more important question is not a narrowly defined legal constitutional position but the spirit of the thing. After all, if you have a government in Delhi you have a legislature in Delhi for what purpose they do exist. If every little thing that they do is subject to overruling by the Lt. Governor.  I think that is the more important question.

Pranjal: When we talk about the legislative assembly that is Delhi, it has 70 elected representatives. So is it also an attack on autonomy of these structure and direct intervention by the Central Government and the way we have seen that the government at the centre has been trying to bring various policies cooperative federalism and all that. So can you find a link between these two.

Shankar: Well, it is quite clear that the Modi government's slogan of cooperative federalism is an empty slogan. I mean Delhi illustrates better than any other thing could have. It is precisely for  reasons of this kind that various parties at various points of time have raised the demand for full statehood for Delhi. The BJP itself in several of it's manifestos had raised that demand. At that point of course, there was a centre in which the Congress was in power and therefore, the BJP probably wanted some autonomy for any possible State Government that it would form in Delhi. But now that it has got majority of it's own in Centre, it was decided that the statehood for Delhi was not a great idea. So, it has done a flip flop. AAP has of course in it's manifesto raised the demand for full statehood for Delhi. Now, one can agree, disagree with the demand but the fact remains that even if one does not have full statehood for Delhi. It can not be the case that an unelected person like Lt. Governor will have more power over things in Delhi than an elected government, elected with a massive mandate from people of Delhi.

Pranjal: When we talk of the post of Lt. Governor in Delhi itself, I mean there has to be an intervention which has to be made by the President itself and the Judiciary in times of such constitutional crisis. Why do you think these two are not making any intervention in the politics of Delhi.

Shankar: The fact of the matter is that the Lt. Governor is not merely an individual acting in it's own right. He is ultimately a person appointed by the Centre and to that extent is presumed to be in line to  what the Centre dictates. In this case, of course it is factually true that this particular Lt. Governor was appointed by the earlier government. But it is also quite evident now that he is very comfortable with the current dispensation in  New Delhi and they are very comfortable with them. The AAP government keeps making the insinuation that the Lt. Governor is acting at the behest of the Centre, at the behest of the Prime Minister and it is very difficult to disagree with that.

Pranjal: But people have been raising fingers at the AAP government also that it has been a chance for them to not only raise questions on the Central Government but also to hide their incapabilities or also to centre around all the issues on the full statehood matter.

Shankar: It is very much the case. I mean it is quite clear that AAP is using every possible opportunity to highlight it's key demand of statehood for Delhi. It wants to drive home the point that under the current constitutional arrangement, the elected government of the Delhi has fairly limited powers and therefore, despite a massive mandate from the people it will not be able to deliver on several key promises because ultimately, it is subject to approval by the nominee of the Centre. So yes, there is clearly a large political element here both from the side of the BJP and from the side of AAP.

Pranjal: What  do you think what impact would it have on the masses since the sentiment which AAP have from the side of the people a massive vote that they gained? What impact did it have?

Shankar: Well, I think it has an impact at two different levels. At one level, there is definitely a feeling which has been captured by several polls as well that the AAP government should be allowed to have a greater say in how Delhi is run than it is currently being allowed to have. On the other hand, there is also the feeling that AAP is over eager to use these opportunities and in some sense divert attention from whether or not it is delivering on the promises it made. There is of course a larger national political frame work in which all of this is happening. See, from the BJP's point of view, after the May 2014 Loksabha elections, every state election that they have contested they have either won outright or ultimately ended up in the Government. The sole exception to this pattern is Delhi where they faced the humiliating rout and AAP had unprecedented victory winning 67 out of 70. There is a very crucial election coming up in Bihar later this year probably September or October. So the BJP I suspect, wants to tell the people of Bihar that look here, the entire country has been backing up the only exception is Delhi and look at whats happens to Delhi because they did not vote for us. They have ended up with the government which is not interested in governing, they are in activist mode all the time. All  they are interested in raising slogans, getting into conflict with us but they don't want to actually run the state. Will you make the same mistake of not voting for us?  That is the larger context from the BJPs point of view. From the AAP's point of view a mandate like what they got in Delhi is all send on a scary mandate. I mean if you have won 67 out of 70 states, you know that the people are expecting an enormous amount out of you. It's a party which has never governed a State before expect that 49 day government you know the beginning of 2014 and it has been facing a lot of internal factional fights. It now has some of it's MLAs being exposed for fake degrees and things like that. So it would prefer to keep the public focus on larger issues like statehood for Delhi rather than on it's own performance.

Pranjal: Thank you Shankar for giving us your time. We will come back to you as the the things proceed. Thank you for watching Newsclick.