Sting or no sting, auto drivers back Kejriwal

At 10 am, Guddu Kumar gets down from an autorickshaw at Hauz Khas Metro station saying, “Okay bhaiya, I am in a hurry I have to reach office on time.” But the autowallah ignores his customer’s compulsion and continues with his monologue.

The driver wants to know what the ‘suited-booted’ Kumar thought about the recent controversy over the leaked audio tape which has put Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind
Kejriwal in trouble..

Metrolife went in an autorickshaw across Delhi to understand what  Delhi’s autowallahs, big Kejriwal supporters, feel on the issue.

Many auto drivers were holding a newspaper or had one on their dashboards, but seemed to know nothing about the sting controversy.

Kailashnath Mishra who comes from Dwarka says, “I have been a ‘Sanghi’ (RSS supporter) for years and I am a party worker as well, but I support AAP in Delhi. The tape recording is not verified, and I think it is just politics. One can see that Kejriwal said it is only okay to join hands if the six Congress men form another party, disassociating from Congress.”

Mishra turns out be the most knowledgeable among the drivers Metrolife interviewed.
P K Jha says, “I voted for AAP but I have nothing to say about this. On TV it may have been blown out of proportion but in the newspapers it says that it is still not verified. So, I will not form an opinion about this now.”

When asked if he still believes in the party and whether the incident has shocked him, he replies in the negative.

“This is politics, madam. It is important to see what is Kejriwal’s intention. BJP and Congress have ruled for years in this country. AAP has just come into power and we have no choice to wait and see whether the water goes under the bridge or the bridge is submerged in water,” says Mehboob Alam from Batla House, implying that AAP is the ‘bridge’ between the poor and the government.

Sunil Sharma from Burari is a young boy in his early twenties who runs an auto from Saket and knows nothing of this ‘sensational news’, as he put it. “I think this is all a fake act to pull AAP into a vicious circle of politics. Kejriwal is a man of the poor and that is what people cannot accept. They cannot accept that such a man can come
into politics.”

Like Sharma, many autowallahs who know nothing of the event, say they still trust the AAP. The elections may be over, but there is a certain group that can’t seem to get over the poll fervour. It is the Delhi autowallahs. During the Aam Aadmi Party campaign in Delhi, autowallahs kept the  momentum going.

When asked why they have so much trust in AAP when this incident is just one of the many controversies that have hit the party’s reputation, Ravi Mishra from Burari says, “We are people who have risen from being scumbags on the roads to become autowallahs, over the span of 25 years. It is not a short time. We have seen who has said what and done what. Name-calling and tattletaling always happen. But it is important to keep adopting new ideas. That’s what AAP has given me.”