Barring a perfunctory protest at Jantar Mantar, on March 17, party MP Sanjay Singh’s emotional outburst when the Rajya Sabha debated the Bill and some angry tweets directed against the Centre, the AAP hasn’t even bothered reaching out to the electorate that gave Kejriwal two consecutive and comprehensive victories to explain how their vote has been rendered worthless. “This was a party that had its genesis in anarchical street protests. Even in the initial years of its electoral victory, the AAP would take to the streets to protest against the slightest obstruction of its mandate to govern – Kejriwal and his colleagues would protest outside Parliament or sit on dharna at the residence of the L-G. Today, when the elected government has been reduced to a puppet of the central government whose strings will be held by the L-G, they haven’t even bothered to launch a campaign to protect their constitutionally-guaranteed powers,” says Anil Chaudhary, president of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee.
The AAP had announced that it would challenge the amended law in the Supreme Court. The amended GNCTD Act ostensibly overrides the five-judge constitution bench judgment of 2018. The 2018 verdict had clearly laid out the separation of powers between the Delhi government and the L-G. It upheld the supremacy of the Delhi government and the state assembly in all legislative and executive matters barring those related to public order, land and the police. The judgment had also cautioned the L-G against behaving like an “obstructionist” and said that the centrally-appointed administrator of the national capital is “bound by the aid and advice” of the city-state’s council of ministers.
There is still no word from AAP on when it plans to move the top court. Given the brief, albeit eventful, political existence of AAP, this is, by itself, an anomaly that is hard to ignore. While the Bill was passed by Parliament last week, it has been nearly two months since its contents were known following the Union cabinet’s approval to the draft amendment, on February 3. Surely, accounting for the BJP-led central government’s brute majority in the Lok Sabha and its ability to get contentious legislations passed in the Rajya Sabha, AAP would have pre-empted that the GNCTD (Amendment) Bill will sail through Parliament. Did it not feel prudent to consult legal experts, particularly those who successfully fought its case in the SC in 2018, and be prepared to immediately challenge the Act after its passage by Parliament?
While the Bill was still being debated in the Rajya Sabha on March 24, AAP MLA Atishi had told Outlook, “the fight against this unconstitutional and unethical law will be fought from the streets of Delhi to the highest court of the country”. A week later, chief ministers of other non-BJP/non-NDA ruled states such as Congress’s Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan, CPM’s Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala and Trinamool Congress’s Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal have come out with strong condemnation of the amended law, likening it with “murder of democracy” and “an affront to our federal principles and rights of States”. Kejriwal, however, seems content with other Opposition parties fighting for his government’s rights. Sources say Kejriwal had personally reached out to interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi and leaders of other Opposition parties soliciting their support against the GNCTD (Amendment) Bill when it was being debated in Parliament. Gandhi had assured Kejriwal of her full support. The Parliament session saw Congress leaders Manish Tewari and Abhishek Manu Singhvi putting up a spirited argument in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha respectively against dilution of powers of the Delhi government.
The passage of the Bill by Parliament was a foregone conclusion – both AAP and the Congress would have known this. Yet, since the Presidential nod for the Act, while the Congress in Delhi, decimated to its core by the AAP over the past eight years, is still making some noises against the new law. What explains the radio silence of Kejriwal and his colleagues? AAP can’t take the excuse of being caught up with elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bengal, Assam or Pondicherry. The argument of waiting for judicial intervention doesn’t hold either as the party spent the period between 2015 and 2018 simultaneously staging raucous protests and fighting a legal battle on the issue of separation of powers. Perhaps, the raging Covid pandemic then? Not a sustainable excuse either as the pandemic doesn’t stop the party from launching a series of press conferences, awareness drives and social media campaigns highlighting the net results of the changed power arithmetic.