AAP's Kejriwal plays victim: Will funding allegations push him over the line in Delhi?

Arvind Kejriwal is playing the victim card. That seems to be his simple strategy to deal with the BJP’s hard hitting campaign against him, without really answering the various queries posed to him, including questionable sources of funding to his party.

Kejriwal’s arguments may not be convincing but they can still work with the electorate if a degree of victimhood is attached to his otherwise clean image. He and his colleagues will be hoping that the charges levelled against the BJP and his party’s splinter group AVAM (AAP Volunteer Action Manch) do not stick to him.

The AVAM expose, a splinter group of erstwhile AAP volunteers, has taken the Aam Admi Party by surprise. The charges are of a serious nature. It is perhaps the most serious charge leveled against Kejriwal and his team since the time they founded AAP. It questions the party’s transparency, and any truth in their allegations could potentially shake the very foundation on which this young party came into existence.

With opinion polls broadly indicating a positive surge in AAP’s poll prospects, Kejriwal has so far had a good run in Delhi polls. His self righteous positioning has been his USP.

Any dilution in AAPs transparency would rub away its “we are different” sheen, and put it in the category of ‘yet another hypocrite’.

Kejriwal’s counter, as responded to NDTV in an interview was “send me to jail, if I have committed any wrong.” He knows that the centre can’t do it. Any ill advised legal move at this stage, three days ahead of the polling in Delhi could evoke a sympathy wave in his favour. Earlier he had said the BJP had pressed the “panic button” and was indulging in “politics of poison”.

His other party colleagues are challenging the BJP leadership to launch an investigation against the transfer of coloured money through four shell companies including Goldmine Buildcom Pvt Ltd, Infolance Software Solutions Ltd, Sunvision Agencies and Skyline Metal and Alloy Pvt Ltd.

They are claiming this is a conspiracy by the BJP to defame them, and that AVAM was acting as their rival’s tool. The party had Mumbai based banker Meera Sanyal move to Delhi to defend the controversial donations, registered at midnight on 5 April, 2014.

The AAP may or may not be honest in its fund raising, but its counter to allegations have not been very convincing for two reasons:

First, by AAP’s own admission,any contribution above Rs 10 lakh and more is routed to its empowered Political Affairs Committee for clearance just to ensure that it did not come through dubious means or through questionable sources. The four cheques each amounting to Rs 50 lakh were routed through it and cleared. How did the PAC not suspect any wrong doing, particularly when Kejriwal himself as a former Income Tax official is supposed to be well versed all possible ways and means of channelization of black money?

Second, Rs two crore is not a small amount for any party or an individual to have passed through without knowing the identity of the donor. AAP could have defended itself well by producing its generous well wisher, rather than insisting that they ask for PAN numbers and the payment of money through cheque. Various TV channels have shown that all the listed addresses of these four companies are false and forged. AVAM claims that there are 31 such companies in AAP’s list of donors but it has for now made revelations only about four.

Another move by the AAP, writing a letter to the Chief Justice of India to conduct an SIT investigation into the funding of AAP, BJP and the Congress is again a diversionary tactic.

While the BJP and the Congress may have to answer for their sources of funding and may not be clean in their financial resource management, the fact remains that currently specific allegations have only been made against AAP.

Also, that could be a politically prudent time buying tactic on part of the AAP.

Kumar Vishwas said they have written to Amit Shah and Sonia Gandhi as presidents of BJP and Congress asking them to write similar letters to the Chief Justice of India. That could be part of its smart politics – moralist rhetoric has been high point of AAP. An AVAM member said if Kejriwal can have lunch with those contributing Rs 20,000, he surely would care to know about persons paying Rs two crore to his party.

But Kejriwal knows the art of turning tables. A day ago he had termed the BJP’s ad on his “double speak” as casteist and usage of the word “Upadravi gotra” as humiliation to an otherwise influential “Agrawal” (Marwari-Bania) community. It’s true that Kejriwal belongs to the Bania community, a fact that he stated at a fund raising meeting with them but the community is generally taken to be sympathetic to the BJP.

The usage of `Upadravi gotra’ was meant to highlight his self proclaimed “anarchist” positioning. In Indian social structure there is no gotra called Updravai . Moreover, Gotra is caste neutral.

His latest charge of EVM tampering, that the BJP symbol light up no matter which button you press, again does not appear to be plausible. But then that makes an additional talking point for the day, all focused around him. He has ensured that he has acquired centre stage of Delhi’s election scene. Both he and his rivals have less than 48 hours to go before campaigning closes in Delhi.