Vardhan's harsh words as AAP seeks trust

NEW DELHI: The leader of the opposition, Harsh Vardhan, attacked Aam Aadmi Party and its chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, with much aplomb during the confidence motion in Delhi assembly on Thursday. In a speech that lasted for about 40 minutes, Vardhan, in an aggressive tone, touched on issues ranging from Kejriwal accepting support from Congress to going overboard on his opposition to VIP culture to his latest announcements on water and power.
“By forming a government with the support of Congress, AAP has lost the moral right to talk about corruption.
Delhiites had given their verdict on December 8 and AAP by going against it has shown disrespect to it. We have no faith in AAP’s ideology and can’t extend support to such an opportunist party which fell for the greed of power,” said Vardhan.
Calling the party’s decision of a ‘referendum’ as an eyewash, Vardhan said even he can call a hundred odd people in his area for a mohallah sabha and make them agree to whatever he wants to hear. “You go by the decision given by a handful of people against that of entire Delhi? People of Delhi gave maximum seats to the most honest party (BJP), which emerged as the largest party,” said Vardhan.
He also attacked Kejriwal for calling every politician and political party corrupt. “When we finished with 32 seats (four short of majority), AAP issued statements like ‘BJP can buy four members and form a government’. But they did not tell us which of their four members were on sale? I want to know what gives them (AAP) the moral right to call everyone corrupt.”
He pointed out that Kejriwal took support from “a party which he used to refer to as ‘most corrupt’, the party against which he contested elections, the party for which he said that if elected he would send their corrupt ministers to jail and unearth all unfair deals of that government.”
Vardhan said AAP had misled Delhiites on the issue of Janlokpal. “You had promised that the Janlokpal bill would be passed on December 29 at Ramlila Maidan despite knowing that the Delhi government cannot bring a Janlokpal bill and that only the central government can do so.”
“To hide this, you made another false promise. You said the common man cannot understand Janlokayukta, and hence, we called it Janlokpal and we will appoint Lokayukta in Delhi. You knew that Delhi already has a Lokayukta. When we were in power in 1993, we had passed the Lokayukta bill,” he claimed. “You knew that you cannot even amend the Lokayukta bill. That too has to be done by the central government with the consent of the President.”
Referring to the water subsidy, Vardhan said the rates had actually gone up by 10% as most households consume much more than what the government has promised. On power, Vardhan said a subsidy was not the solution. “We expected them to call DERC and put pressure on it to ask discoms to reduce tariff. Giving a subsidy is nothing but misleading people by spending their money to reduce the tariff. This decision does not punish the discoms but the people,” he added.
He ticked off AAP on the issue of red beacons, saying they couldn’t take credit for something that was banned by Supreme Court a year ago. Attacking Kejriwal for refusing security, Vardha said, “You didn't want security, but your decision to take oath at Ramleela Maidan forced deployment of at least 4,000 policemen for your security there,” he said. The BJP leader said there was nothing special about the CM using the Metro to travel as thousands of security personnel had to be deployed for this. “We (BJP) are also for clean politics, but do we need to demonstrate it in this manner,” he asked.
Vardhan also sought an apology from Kejriwal and his party for their statements on the Batla House encounter, for calling for a referendum on the Kashmir issue and on Kejriwal’s meeting with a controversial Muslim cleric.