Video Editor: Vishal Kumar
On 10 August 2016, months before the Punjab Elections, Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party Chief Arvind Kejriwal had infamously pledged that he would never hesitate in calling senior SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia a ‘drug lord.’
Kejriwal had, quite understandably, drowned himself and his party in a pre-poll blame-game, as he went all out to campaign for the AAP.
The incumbent Akali Dal and its ministers, hence, became Kejriwal’s most obvious target. Punjab, in those days was known for its notorious drug mafia and Kejriwal saw it as a low-hanging, poll-time fruit.
But Majithia filed a criminal defamation case against Kejriwal and other senior AAP leaders for bringing great disrepute to his public standing.
It wasn’t long before the ghosts of his 2016 speech came to haunt him back. On 15 March 2018, Kejriwal wrote an apology letter to Majithia, saying that the charges he had made in poll-bound Punjab were “unfounded.”
But the Delhi Chief Minister’s apology drew widespread criticism, not only from within the AAP but also from Punjab’s political circles. The party’s top leader and lawmaker Bhagwant Mann, who had campaigned extensively against Punjab’s drug menace, resigned from the post of state’s party president. So did his party’s Punjab Vice President Aman Arora.
Lashing out at Kejriwal for ‘betraying’ the people of Punjab, senior Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu said “the people of Punjab had seen the AAP supremo as an alternative leader. But with this U-turn, Kejriwal has back-stabbed them all.”
In his letter, Kejriwal said allegations against Majithia are 'unfounded.' But how did he find it out?
On 16 February this year, the Punjab govt told the Punjab High Court that the state police’s report on Majithia's alleged role in the drug trade, was still being examined.
In fact Kejriwal, had made ‘trial by public’ and ‘trial by media’ his signature style, while taking on his opponents. Whether it was PM Modi, or the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, the MCD, or the Delhi Police chief.
He was the fearless Aam Aadmi Ki Awaaz, he thrived on defamation case, it was his badge of honour. This abject surrender, this ‘sorry’, it changes everything.
He is no longer an Aam aadmi. He is just another convenient politician.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)