By Sushil Kutty
“I’ve been looking for answers/I’ve been looking for clues/I couldn’t find it in the paper/Couldn’t find it in the news/Oh there’s poison in the water/Oh there are toxins in the air/Oh it’s got us fighting over nothing/Whoever’s up there doesn’t care….” These are lyrics of a song sung blue by a singer called Aaron Stephens and it fits Arvind Kejriwal’s charge of the Haryana government poisoning the Yamuna water like a glove.
The Pied Piper of the Aam Aadmi Party has been vociferous after talking of “genocide” being planned on the people of Delhi. From toxins in the air to poison in the Yamuna and it’s not the BJP alone, Kejriwal’s ‘Poison in the Yamuna’ barb brought both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and LoP Rahul Gandhi on to the same page, a rare alignment of jilted stars in the Milky Way!
Rahul Gandhi emerged from the shadows of self-imposed isolation to flay Kejriwal for failing to cleanse the Yamuna of deadly toxins. Kejriwal, however, had bigger fish to skewer. Like replying to the Election Commission’s notice on his charge that the Haryana government was “mixing poison” in the Yamuna to murder, commit genocide on Delhi’s millions.
“We got to know the sinister plan and diverted the poisonous water and saved Delhi,” the ousted Delhi Chief Minister reasoned, his face a study in concern. Bigger crooks have tried to put on a deadpan face, but for honest-Joe Kejriwal it was a piece of cake. Making allegations come natural and easy to Arvind Kejriwal, and accusations against him is like water off a duck’s back. Arvind Kejriwal told the election panel it was his “public duty to highlight toxicity.”
Who can argue with that? The man is so full of believable homilies, and in an exclusive class of ‘One’. A Sonipat court has ordered Kejriwal to present himself at the CJM court on February 17 for alleging that Haryana “mixed poison in the Yamuna.” Sonipat CJM Neha Goyal couldn’t have been more outraged. In fact, for hundreds of thousands of Haryanvis, the AAP convener is beyond insufferable.
And this when Arvind Kejriwal is himself a Haryanvi Baniya! To the Election Commission, Kejriwal replied his remarks were made in the context of an “urgent public health crisis” staring election-bound Delhi in the face! The reply ran into 14 pages and Kejriwal said it was his duty to speak against the “severe toxicity and contamination” of the raw water flowing out of BJP-ruled Haryana.
The Delhi Chief Minister forgot to mention his own failure to rid the Yamuna of the severely toxic “floating foam”. Instead, he blamed Delhi’s water woes on ammonia and other deadly chemicals. Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, whose calm disposition is the stuff legend, took a trip to the Wazirabad Canal, which is fed by the Yamuna, and took a sip of the “contaminated water” to prove Kejriwal’s allegation was a yarn, but Kejriwal couldn’t have cared less at “such antics.”
People forget that Arvind Kejriwal is fighting with his back to the wall and is hanging exhausted against the ropes. Ten years is a long time and Kejriwal’s sagging image rests on lies, lies and more lies, on apologies, apologies and more apologies. The only thing saving Kejriwal’s hide are his glib statements. In the “States”, Las Vegas specifically, Kejriwal would have hit the jackpot at every casino.
Will Kejriwal make a podium finish on February 8? “Stinking water” has been an allegation on every Delhi tongue from long before Kejriwal woke up to “Ammonia in the Yamuna.” Kejriwal’s vote-banks in the Delhi slums are largely intact, where voters are happy getting any water, even ammonia-laden poisonous Yamuna water. But even slum-dwellers do not drink “Yamuna water”. They, too, invest a daily 100 bucks on “bottled mineral water.”
In fact, all of Delhi lives and breathes on bottled mineral water. It has become a habit and drinking “mineral” is no longer VVIP! Bottlers have been making a killing all these 11 Kejriwal years. Kejriwal says ammonia in raw water from Haryana is so “extreme” that Delhi’s water treatment plants can’t bring the toxicity down to safe permissible limits. Kejriwal didn’t reveal where the poisoned Haryana water was diverted to and whether people there died of ammonia overdose.
But the BJP should stop playing victim even if Prime Minister Narendra Modi is disgusted with the “disgusting AAP-da”. Modi says Arvind Kejriwal will go to despicable depths to prevent defeat in the Delhi elections. But does Prime Minister Modi actually drink the same Yamuna water? “Can anyone imagine that the BJP government in Haryana was trying to poison me?” Modi asked. “It is an insult to Indian culture, an insult to our character. The ‘AAP-da’ will drown in the same river.”
The honest to God truth is both Prime Minister and Chief Minister can’t escape blame for Delhi’s denizens not getting clean drinking water. In fact, Prime Minister Modi hasn’t done anything to ensure Indian citizens have access to potable water, whether it is in Delhi, in Mumbai, in Chennai or in Bengaluru. Modi will let the worst things go on and on till it becomes an election issue so that the Bharatiya Janata Party can make a huge hue and cry about it.
Modi says that for 11 years he, too, has been drinking the same ammonia-laced Yamuna water. The question is, which prime minister of which country will tolerate such an abomination and not do anything about it? If “Chief Minister Delhi” did not do his job, “Prime Minister India” also did not. Neither the Chief Minister nor the Prime Minister covered themselves with glory.
The Prime Minister cannot make a clean getaway. “AAP-da people have become desperate due to the fear of defeat. Is Haryana different from Delhi? Don’t they have children and relatives in Delhi? Will they mix poison for their own people?” Modi asked, adding that everybody in Delhi, including “himself and the diplomats and judges”, were drinking the same Haryana water. Did Kejriwal save the lives of Modi, diplomats and judges by diverting the poisonous Haryana water to some hell-hole far away from Delhi?
“Can anyone think that to kill Modi, the Haryana BJP has mixed poison in water? Was there a conspiracy to kill judges in Delhi? What are you talking about? It is in the character of Indians to forgive mistakes but neither Delhi nor India forgives sins committed with ill intention,” Modi said. “This is fraud and shamelessness. They want to make people struggle for water and want Purvanchalis to do Chhathi Maiyya’s puja surrounded by garbage.”
The truth and the blot is, both “Prime Minister Narendra Modi” and the “Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal” are to blame for the toxins in the air, and for the poison in the Yamuna. This has got both of them fighting. Should the electorate care? February 8 should deliver the answer. (IPA Service)
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