Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader and former union minister Salman Khurshid has slammed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for launching a false and malicious campaign against former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit to gain power in 2013.
“Ably assisted by Anna Hazare, who came, fasted and conquered, the former IRS civil servant converted the long-debated Lokpal into a battle cry for anarchy, but virtually destroyed the ability of the Congress party, itself born as a mass movement, to deal with crowds possessed by the cause of eradicating corruption from our daily lives. The deluge of cynicism and false salvation combined in a fatal mix to sweep away Dikshit despite a remarkable record of growth of services in Delhi,” Khurshid said in his book Spectrum Politics: Unveiling the Defence in an attempt to explain the politics behind the entire 2G spectrum case. The book, being released after a Delhi court acquitted former Telecom Minister A Raja, DMK Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi and others accused of corruption and money laundering charges in the 2G spectrum cases.
The anti-corruption protests that started in 2011, affected then PM Manmohan Singh, who had an clean image, said Khurshid. Noting that Kejriwal “held the national capital to ransom” Khurshid said that “fasts, flags and feverish slogans of change injected idealism bordering on revolutionary zeal. Kejriwal became the oracle who wielded a brush that relentlessly and mercilessly tarred many a reputation, starting with the unimpeachable and noble PM Manmohan Singh.”
Referring to the verbal duels between Kejriwal and the BJP since AAP came to power, Khurshid has raised a doubt if the new outfit and the BJP which came to power at the Centre in 2014, were working towards a similar objective of decimating the Congress. “Since democracy does not countenance a vacuum, our moral and political retreat was followed by the ascendency of a quickly assembled outfit AAP in Delhi and BJP-led NDA at the Centre. It is a moot question that if both of them were working for a similar if not the same objective –the annihilation of the Congress- how is it that there is such bitter antagonism between them,” Khurshid said.
Pointing at a distinction, he said while the BJP had an ideology that purports to dismantle the secular state envisioned by the Congress during the Independence movement, the AAP had a malleable ideology that combines extreme opposites and can best be described as unmitigated opportunism.
