Delhi Government: Getting Even With The Odd Chief Minister

A righteous Kejriwal makes the governance of Delhi all about one man’s whims and paranoia.

- Aanchal Bansal

The last month of 2015 was a trying month for the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi. Less than a year since its leader Arvind Kejriwal had swept the state’s Assembly polls to become Chief Minister with 67 legislators in a house of 70, delivering a blow to a BJP basking in the glow of its all-India victory just half a year earlier, the government found itself lurching from crisis to crisis. It was subjected to a scathing rebuke from the Judiciary over its inability to curb air pollution, an embarrassing raid was carried out by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that sealed the office of one of its key officers, nearly 200 of its bureaucrats went on a one-day strike, and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley filed a defamation suit against Kejriwal for making allegations that linked him with financial irregularities at the Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA).

More recently, while the jury is still out on whether the plan to allow alternately numbered cars on Delhi roads for the first 15 days of January has been a success against air pollution, AAP leaders have been making grand claims of having tackled one of the city’s big menaces and delivered real governance. A closer look at how the Kejriwal government has been operating, however, reveals not just chaos in the corridors but a style of functioning that leaves officials and observers alike exasperated.