Kejriwal responds to BJP's chargesheet, quotes Kabir's couplet

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, on Saturday (December 28) while responding to the ruling-Bharatiya Janta Party’s chargesheet which called out the failures of his Aam Aadmi Party government in the city, said that their shortcoming should be strictly reviewed.

Kejriwal took to Twitter to respond to the allegations and quoted a line from poet Kabir’s couplet.

“Our culture teaches us to keep our critics close. We will go through their ‘aarop patra’. We will implement the good suggestions in the next five years. We want everyone to strictly review our work and point out our shortcomings and give suggestions so that we can do more good work,” Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi.

The BJP’s Delhi unit released an “aarop patra” (chargesheet) against the Kejriwal government accusing it of “misguiding and befooling” the residents of the national capital in the last five years and also pointed that they “failed” to keep the promises made ahead of the 2015 assembly polls.

The opposition party’s Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari and Union minister Harsh Vardhan released the chargesheet — Aarop Patra: Jhooth aur Vishwashaghat ki AAP Sarkar — in the presence of a battery of senior BJP leaders at an event held at the Central Park in Connaught Place in central Delhi.

“The government of the Aam Aadmi Party has become a government of lies and betrayal. This charge sheet is very important and it has taken a long time to prepare it. People and everyone living in Delhi will understand this,” Tiwari said.

The Kejriwal-led party, who had won 67 out of 70 seats in the 2015 polls, has adopted “70 out of 70” as their slogan for the elections likely to be held next year.

Union minister Harsh Vardhan and Lok Sabha MP Meenakshi Lekhi and other senior BJP leaders accused the AAP of “fanning the fire” during the recent violent protests in Delhi against the amended citizenship law.

In the document released by the saffron party, one of the accusations is about the recent incidents of violence in Delhi during the anti-CAA protests, especially in Jamia Nagar and Seelampur.

Three short videos, targeting the AAP and its government, made by the Delhi BJP was also released at the event, and city unit chief and Lok Sabha MP Manoj Tiwari said, “This chargesheet will now be soon circulated in each of the seven Lok Sabha constituencies and the 70 Assembly segments.”

One video dealt with the recent incidents of arson and violence during the protests and sought to put the blame on the AAP and its senior leaders of “fanning the fire”.

The chargesheet document also contains a segment that reads — “Delhi ko jalane ki sajish” (conspiracy to burn Delhi).

The other two videos attempts to dent the AAP voter base among the poor, especially the auto-rickshaw drivers and workers who do odd jobs, as the protagonist in the two videos belong to the two sections of society respectively.

The “I Love Kejriwal” campaign has been running in Delhi aimed at wooing auto-rickshaw drivers, a sizeable chunk of voters in the city.

Vardhan, in his address, asked if Kejriwal and his government did anything to make Delhi “world-class or beautiful”.

“Just cheap publicity and advertisements, and stamping his party’s name on every big project of the Modi government, this is what the AAP government has been doing,” he alleged.

Hitting out at the AAP supremo, the Union minister said, “Kejriwal’s arrogance has become bigger than the mandate the AAP got in the polls.”

“In this election, people will show the mirror to him and his party. Tell me, if people of Delhi want a government that works for five years or five months,” he said.

Senior BJP leaders Vijay Goel and Vijender Gupta, Lok Sabha MPs Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma and Ramesh Bidhuri, among others, were present at the event.

(With inputs from agencies)