DNA Edit: AAP vs Babus - Delhi slugfest

Indian democracy has seen its fair share of lows. MPs and MLAs have fought each other in Parliament as well as legislative assemblies; Indian lawmen have been caught watching porn in the Karnataka and Gujarat assemblies; ink, footwear, microphones have been hurled at activists and leaders.

However, all of these antics (and many more), still don’t take the cake when it comes to eroding the integrity of a participatory democracy. Rarely, if ever,  has Indian politics witnessed a conflict like the on-going feud between the AAP-led Delhi government and its bureaucracy. Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash has claimed that early this week he was assaulted by two MLAs at the residence of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. AAP has been insisting that these allegations are nothing but hogwash and a devious political stratagem from the BJP’s stable.

Meanwhile, the Home Ministry has also pitched in demanding a detailed report of the incident from the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. Notwithstanding the findings of the Delhi Lieutenant Governor, there are only two possible hypotheticals that can be eked out from this episode: Either CS Anshu Prakash was assaulted or he wasn’t. If the CS was indeed assaulted, the guilty MLAs must be prosecuted and CM Kejriwal should give a clear and detailed account of the unpardonable fall in administrative decorum.

In case the CS wasn’t assaulted- a situation that seems highly unlikely- police will have to probe deeper into why a top ranking officer would want to kick up a political storm, and at whose behest. In either case, it is the governance of Delhi and its people that will suffer the consequences. The first few years of AAP’s regime shows that the capital is no stranger to misgovernance. Caught in a vortex of centre-state power struggles, the patience of the people with the CM and his party is wearing thin.