Strikes Well Staggered

AAP still has big political plans. But BJP has its ways to check the rival’s ways.

- Pragya Singh

LAST week, a posse of policemen— answerable to the Union Home Ministry, not Delhi government— interrogated the deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia. Their subject: chief secretary Anshu

Prakash, who has charged ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders with assa­ ult during a meeting on February 19. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has already been through a lengthy police grilling in the matter.

For all the questions and answers, the matter refuses to go away or arrive at a logical end. If public memories of le affa­ ire Anshu Prakash were fading, intermit­ tent police interventions regurgitate it on TV screens. The sequence of events is unreal: in most states, police are at the beck and call of ministers but in the cap­ ital it is just the reverse.

AAP leaders don’t hunt for words before concluding that these Q&As appear scripted. “This was a well­orchestrated scheme put in place soon after AAP came to power,” says party leader Ashish Khetan.

“The BJP and Congress are constantly trying to prove that we are no different from other parties—that’s exactly what they say after every incident.”