By Sidharth Mishra

The cat and mouse game between the Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal may have entered a decisive phase. Refusing to buckle down under the offensive by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Saxena, after the vitriolic attack let loose on him from the floor of Vidhan Sabha, has launched a counter. He first wrote a long letter to the Chief Minister countering him on each of the allegation made against him, and thereafter extended an invitation to Kejriwal for a tête-à-tête that is face to face meeting. Realizing the gravitas of the letter, Kejriwal has not been rank dismissive of it, as he did in the past calling the missives love letters.

However, the Chief Minister has tried to wriggle out from a face to face meeting saying that he is preoccupied with party work in Punjab. The sharp politician that he is, Kejriwal has tried an indirect counter by moving the Supreme Court for a ‘time-bound’ conduct of the Mayor’s poll. It’s another matter that his party councilors have been as much responsible for the disruption of the house proceeding as their BJP counterparts.

By Sidharth Mishra

The winter session of Delhi assembly concluded much before the winter ended in the national Capital. The grapevine is that the Lieutenant Governor did not allow the extension of the session as there was no evidence that there was any pending legislative agenda.

Going by the coverage of the Delhi assembly in the newspapers, it was amply clear that the proceedings of the four-day session had less to do with law making and more to do with mud-slinging. In the middle of the four-day session, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took out time to fly to Hyderabad to attend a political rally. Rest of the days were marked by rumpus.

The issue in the nutshell is that it was pointless to have the session. The only justification was the constitutional provision that the state assembly must meet at least once in six months. The sparks from the session have spurred another round of diatribe between the Chief Minister and the Lieutenant Governor with the latter taking umbrage to the Chief Minister calling him names from the floor of the house.

By Sidharth Mishra

Ministry of Home Affairs, to overcome the heat in the Kanjhawala murder case, has recommended suspension of 11 Delhi Police cops for dereliction of duty. This has been on the basis of a report filed by Special Commissioner of Police Shalini Singh. One is sure that the senior police official must have done a thorough job before recommending action. However, one wonders if she mentioned about the role of former Commissioner of Police Rakesh Asthana in dismantling several decades old PCR policing system.

Among the 11 cops suspended, six of them were on PCR duty and five were at a picket on the day of the incident. There have been news reports of the late response by PCRs and the fact that one of the PCR vans had not responded to a call at all. In all, two are sub-inspectors, four assistant sub-inspectors, four head constables and one constable have been suspended. They all belong to Rohini district.

By Sidharth Mishra

Sometimes in the late 1990s a very enterprising Deputy Commissioner of Police of the North East district had conducted a survey on the social factors for the high rate of crime in the district. North-East district, in the pre-Metro days, was used to be most backward area consisting mostly of the shanty colonies.

The area was also known to be communally sensitive and on many occasions petty crimes led to communal flare ups. The survey carried out at the behest of the DCP showed a particular trend. Most of the crimes of snatching, loot and scuffle, sometimes catastrophic, happened between 7 pm and 9 pm.

This was the time when the wage earning residents of the shanty colonies returned home from work, in most of the cases carrying days’ earnings in cash. The area during this period also witnessed power cuts regularly allowing the crime to be committed, using the police lexicon, under the cover of darkness.

By Sidharth Mishra

This is the centenary year of Delhi University. Founded in 1922, the 100-years-old university for at least last five decades has been the leading centre of academics for both the under-graduate and the post-graduate programmes in the country. Till a few years back, the newspapers gave screaming headlines saying that even a 100 percent score in the qualifying examination could not ensure you a seat on the prestigious campus.

Last week, read a squirming headline in the inside pages of the newspapers. It mentioned that the university still had 6000 seats vacant in the under-graduate programmes. This means that the university has been unable to fill almost 10 percent of the seats allocated to it.

This scenario compares with the situation, where the private, self-financing being the more appropriate word,  education institutions count on their vacant seats and try and find the remedial measures to meet the financial losses which the untaken seats would accrue to. Financial losses are not necessarily interpreted in the terms of loss of profit but the availability of finances to meet the salary and the infrastructure bills.

By Sidharth Mishra

On the first working day of 2022, the city had witnessed a huge jam following the Bandh call given by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) protesting the implementation of the New Excise Policy. It was an indicator of the things to come, we all know what turn the New Excise Policy took, landing a Minister in jail and several named in the charge-sheet of what seems to be a humungous scam.

There are no aggressive indicators this time around and hopefully the city would be free of any jam on the first working day of the year. And if that happens, hopefully the city too witnesses a jam free year. This is quite possible as the same political party is now dominant force in both the state assembly and the municipal council.

However the famous English poet TS Eliot said, “… between the idea and the reality falls the shadow.”  Given the posturing by the two leading political parties of the city – The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), there would be continued jam in the smooth governance of the city. The blame game would continue and the city’s civic health would continue to suffer.

By Sidharth Mishra

If people in Delhi were awaiting a change in their lives following the results of the recent MCD polls, differently interpreted by different television channels, depending on their ideological loyalty, it was not going to happen. At least the uttering of the political people in the week after the elections do not give any indication for change.

Last week there was an unfortunate acid attack by stalkers on a school-going girl. The shameful incident was indication enough for the political motor mouths to once again get into a wordy duel. Aam Aadmi Party national spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj alleged that after the arrival of Delhi L-G V K Saxena, crimes have gone up in Delhi.  “L-G saab, you have Delhi Police with you and crimes are increasing every day. Instead of interfering in the work of the Delhi Government, you should concentrate on your work. After your arrival, crimes are increasing in Delhi,” he said in a tweet.

The other prominent face of the ruling party in Delhi government and now also in the municipal corporation, Swati Maliwal said, “Despite a ban, the chemical is as easy to purchase as vegetables.”  In a video uploaded on Twitter, Maliwal said “We have issued notice to the city police over the incident. The attackers should be arrested and given stringent punishment.”  The attackers have been arrested and the law would take its own course.

By Sidharth Mishra

There is this famous couplet from Bhakti era saint Kabirdas which says, “Duvidha mein dou gaye, na Maya mili na Ram (when in two minds you neither get world pleasures, nor spiritual salvation).” The recent attempt by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to emerge as rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has created somewhat similar situation for him.

The results of the assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and that of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi clearly indicate that while there were not many takers for Kejriwal’s Hindu espousal, there was definite disenchantment in the minority community on the issue. The loss of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidates in the minority-dominated wards of Delhi are a clear indicator. If there was any doubt, lesson was learnt when AAP tried to poach on a few Muslim corporators from Congress, who were brow beaten back by the local populace.