What's aam here? Mega splurge on Mann's swearing-in raises eyebrows

In less than a week since it scored a stunning victory in the Punjab Assembly polls, riding on a narrative for ‘change’, is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) already following its rivals – the Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) – in wasteful expenditure from the cash-strapped exchequer?

While Bhagwant Mann has not yet been sworn in as Chief Minister, Punjab’s treasury – already strained by a debt burden of over ₹3 lakh-crore – has been thrown open for expenses towards a publicity blitzkrieg aimed at ramping up the appeal of the AAP’s CM-designate.

On Sunday, Mann, along with party boss and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the 91 newly elected AAP MLAs in Punjab, participated in a road show in Amritsar to “thank voters” and visit the various holy sites in the city, including the Golden Temple and the Durgiana Mandir. The jamboree is estimated to have cost Punjab over ₹61 lakh.

Punjab’s Chief Secretary Anirudh Tiwari had directed the allocation of ₹15 lakh to the district administration of Amritsar and ₹2 lakh to the local administration of each of Punjab’s 23 districts “for making adequate arrangements, including transportation for the function”. Besides the total of ₹61 lakh allocated by the state exchequer for the road show, state transport buses were also pressed into service to ferry AAP supporters from across the state to Amritsar and back.

Swearing-in mega event

Similar transportation arrangements are now underway to ensure a massive attendance at Mann’s swearing-in ceremony scheduled for Wednesday, March 16, at Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of revolutionary freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, in Nawanshahr district. Mann has chosen the vicinity of Khatkar Kalan’s Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh Memorial and Museum for his swearing-in ceremony over the Punjab Raj Bhavan, where traditionally the new Chief Minister and council of ministers are sworn -in at a modest function.

Also read: Why stunning win in Punjab is an opportunity and challenge alike for AAP

It was initially rumoured that Mann will be taking oath of office at Khatkar Kalan along with half a dozen newly elected AAP MLAs, who will join his council of ministers. However, the AAP then decided that the lavish function, being organised at an expenditure of over ₹2.40 crore, drawn from the state exchequer, will only have Mann taking oath as CM. His cabinet colleagues will be sworn in later at a smaller ceremony to be hosted at the Punjab Raj Bhavan.

Besides the ₹61 lakh spent by the state’s Finance Department on AAP’s Amritsar road show and the ₹2.40 crore earmarked for Mann’s swearing-in ceremony, an additional ₹86 lakh is also being spent on advertisements to be aired on various television channels to publicise the event at Khatkar Kalan. The details around similar allocation towards full front-page advertisements in various leading dailies of Punjab on March 15 and March 16, with Mann inviting Punjabis to his swearing-in ceremony, are not known as yet.

Farmer compensation

The expenditure from the exchequer on AAP’s road show and Mann’s swearing-in ceremony does not include the amount of ₹69 lakh that the Punjab Treasury has promised to pay as compensation to farmers in Khatkar Kalan, whose crops the local administration had to clear out in order to make logistical arrangements for Mann’s swearing-in ceremony. The local administration has been asked to clear out 150 acres of standing crop in Khatkar Kalan and pay compensation to farmers at the rate of ₹46,000 per acre for their loss.

Sources said the administration had earlier estimated that crop spread over 13 acres of land will need to be cleared out to make arrangements for the rally. This was then revised upwards to 40 acres. However, a newly-elected AAP MLA told The Federal, requesting anonymity, that Kejriwal and Mann wanted the swearing-in ceremony to be “as historic as our victory in Punjab and decided that not only VIP guests, AAP MLAs and party workers from different constituencies, but also common people from across the state and our cadre from Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana should attend the function.”

Also read: People have said Kejriwal is not a terrorist: AAP chief’s Punjab victory speech

“We are now expecting a crowd of over six lakh people as against the earlier estimate of two lakh, because of which we will have to make additional arrangements for the crowd, bus, car and two-wheeler parking, helipads for VVIPS who are expected to attend the function, and also expand the area earlier identified for setting up a make-shift kitchen. The finance department has been given necessary instructions to provide funds for all the arrangements and these will be accounted for in the revised budgetary estimates,” a senior Punjab government official told The Federal.

Show of strength

The AAP, said sources, wishes to use Mann’s swearing-in ceremony as a ‘show of strength’ since the Punjab verdict has given the Delhi-based regional outfit the unique distinction of having governments, with an unprecedented majority no less, in two states.

More importantly, Kejriwal also wishes to use the event as the AAP’s launch pad for the Assembly polls due in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh at the end of this year, along with elections to the Gujarat Assembly. The AAP is eying major gains in Himachal and Gujarat – in the latter, it has already had a good showing, at the expense of the Congress party, in some municipal polls while in the hill state it has, so far, been floundering.

Bhagat Singh’s legacy

The AAP’s decision to choose Khatkar Kalan over Punjab’s Raj Bhavan as the venue – the sole reason for the escalation in the cost of organising such a function – is also in line with the party’s aggressive move to showcase itself and its top boss, Kejriwal, as the real claimant of the legacy of Bhagat Singh. After failing to appropriate other icons such as Mahatma Gandhi and the much-revered Sikh warrior Baba Banda Singh Bahadur, in the past, the AAP now believes it has finally found a mascot in Bhagat Singh to widen its appeal not just in Punjab, but also in other uncharted territories where it seeks to expand over the next few years by displacing the beleaguered Congress party as the BJP’s principal pan-India alternative.

During the Punjab poll campaign, when Kejriwal was accused by former aide and AAP founding member Kumar Vishwas of hobnobbing with Khalistani separatists, he had tried to deflate the charges by calling himself a follower of Bhagat Singh. Through the Punjab campaign and after the party’s victory on March 10, Kejriwal and Mann have repeatedly invoked Bhagat Singh.

The revolutionary freedom fighter aside, the AAP is also trying to portray itself as a huge votary of the Ambedkarite thought — a strategy evidently aimed at consolidating its base among Punjab’s 32 per cent Dalit vote bank. Soon after the Punjab verdict, Mann had also directed all state government departments against displaying photographs of sitting Chief Ministers in their offices and instead putting up portraits of Bhagat Singh and BR Ambedkar.

The CM-designate has also begun sporting a basanti (yellow) turban – aping the most popular portraiture of Bhagat Singh – and has appealed that men attending his swearing-in ceremony at Khatkar Kalan to sport the same, and women to wear a basanti chunri.

High on symbolism

Mann’s swearing-in at Khatkar Kalan may, thus, score high on symbolism, given the strong filial and emotional bond that Punjabis share with the martyred freedom fighter. However, by spending a large chunk of public money on an event that could have easily been organised with a more modest budget and setting, Mann is also unwittingly deflating the aura AAP has tried to build around itself with assertions of being a “poor party” of ordinary citizens and one that is markedly different from entrenched outfits like the Congress, BJP, or Akali Dal.

Expectedly, criticism of the avoidable flamboyance has come in thick and fast. Though Congress leaders in the state are still busy fighting among themselves after the party’s rout, newly elected Congress MLA from Bholath, Sukhpal Singh Khaira, hit out at AAP for the “gross misuse of public exchequer for politically motivated party promotion, which is totally unacceptable at a time when we’re burdened with a colossal debt of over ₹3 lakh crore.”

Khaira, who had first been elected as MLA on an AAP ticket and served as leader of Opposition for a period when Amarinder Singh was the Chief Minister, had defected to the Congress last year. He successfully contested the recent Assembly polls on a Congress ticket and, sources say, has now been lobbying for a key post within his new party, especially since many prominent faces of the party – Charanjit Singh Channi, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Manpreet Badal, etc – have all lost in the recent elections. Khaira has also demanded that the public money being spent on Mann’s swearing-in ceremony and other AAP events be refunded to the treasury by Kejriwal.

Also read: Mann to take oath at Khatkarkalan, village of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh

With its political rivals in Punjab totally decimated in the recent polls, the AAP will, expectedly, have a smooth sailing for quite some time. However, Mann and his party must also realise that the unprecedented verdict in their favour was in good measure triggered by the Punjab electorate’s frustration with practices of the state’s traditional political parties.

The vote for change

By using public money for self-promotion, just as his predecessors did, at a time when the state is on the verge of bankruptcy and the treasury may be severely constrained in providing for the hugely populist promises that the AAP made in the elections, Mann may see a swift and quick erosion in his personal goodwill and that of his party.

The AAP had promised alternative politics in Punjab. The sooner it begins to deliver on that promise, the better it will be for the party – not just in Punjab but also in Himachal and Gujarat, where it hopes to project a combination of the Kejriwal’s Delhi model and Mann’s Punjab experiment to get incremental votes at the end of this year.