What’s the AAP government up to?

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi erred recently in granting permission for the prosecution of former JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and nine others for sedition under Section 124A of the IPC and has set a bad precedent with it. Kanhaiya and others were charged with shouting or supporting slogans against the unity and integrity of the country on the campus on February 9, 2016. The Delhi police filed the chargesheet only last year and the Arvind Kejriwal government has since been criticised by the BJP for delaying the sanction for prosecution. This criticism was part of the political attack of the BJP on its opponents, calling them the ‘tukde tukde gang’. It used the Delhi police as a tool in this case. The AAP government succumbed to the pressure and has played into the hands of the BJP.

The AAP government has said that it granted permission “as a matter of policy’' of non-interference in judicial matters and “as a matter of principle’’. This is wrong defence, and appears to be so especially in light of a lower court judgement in Karnataka last week in the case of the Bidar school sedition case, in which the court granted bail to the accused, ruling that “Ingredients of Section 124A of IPC (sedition) are not prima facie made out...” The fact that the AAP government had the discretionary power to grant or not grant permission for prosecution required it, too, to apply its mind and find out if the ingredients of Section 124A of IPC had been present in Kanhaiya Kumar’s slogan shouting. The Delhi government failed to do so. And the fault is even more grievous because the government actually received legal opinion from its own counsel that the police case against Kanhaiya and others was “flimsy”, riddled with “gaps” and did “not amount to sedition against the State”. There has been credible evidence to show that the videos on which the charges were based were doctored. The AAP government’s decision thus begs the question: Why?

Some recent decisions and actions or inaction on the part of the Kejriwal government have created doubts whether the Aam Aadmi Party and its government are softening their positions on policies of the BJP government at the Centre. This may be part of a political plan not to cede ground to the BJP on some issues like nationalism. Whether a party will gain or lose from a policy of accepting and adopting elements from its rival’s ideology is debatable. But there is certainly a credibility issue involved in the Delhi government’s decision on Kanhaiya Kumar and others.