Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party has earned a ‘Khaas’ niche for itself in telling lies and getting away with it too. Neither once, nor twice but again and again, the AAP top brass brazenly tell lies and strangely believe it to be true as well, testifying the Goebbels time-tested theory of ‘repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it’.
Believe it or not, like Rahul Gandhi’s gold production from potatoes, Kejriwal gave a quick solution to Prali (stubble) burning, amid widespread alarm over deteriorating air pollution hugely in Punjab, saying that a chemical would be devised to address the issue without causing environmental hazards but will also provide benefit of getting fertilizer out of it. The claim was not made in huff but had a sound basis too. But what happened next was a classical case of Kejri functioning.
Post commitment of its Chief Minister, the Delhi government announced with much fanfare that a pilot project would be launched for demonstrating the use of a bio-decomposer, developed by the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (Pusa). Accordingly in 2020, the Agriculture Department of the Delhi Administration covered 1,900 acres of farmland across 39 villages and in last October, decision was taken to bring 4,000 acres of farmland under spray. The project, however, faced certain technical snags, witnessing hue and cry all over. Eyebrows were raised over the credibility of the Chief Minister and the opposition openly yelled ‘fraud, deceit and what not’. The AAP leadership kept on telling lie after lie. However, the hullabaloo was not just the opposition crying wolf as is the trend in Indian politics.
The Directorate of Information and Publicity (DIP) of the National Capital administration said in a written reply on August 1, 2021 to BJP MLA OP Sharma’s question during the Monsoon Session of the Assembly that the Delhi government has spent over Rs 15.8 crore on advertisements about the Pusa bio-decomposer and Rs 40,000 on the chemical that converts paddy straw (stubble) into manure to combat air pollution.
The details of the entire episode were interesting, surprising and shocking as well. An amount of Rs 40,000 was spent on the purchase of the chemical to convert stubble into compost. The Agriculture Branch of Development held 56 training programmes with an expenditure of Rs 4,69,000 to raise awareness among farmers against stubble burning. Officials of the Pusa Institute and the government trained around 1,400-1,500 farmers in converting stubble into compost at a special camp. After, that even the chief minister had hailed its use, but the bio-decomposer had run into some problems, following which the Delhi government has ordered a third party probe while Punjab is also separately testing it.
The ‘big lie’ exploded into a ‘big disaster’ in October this year, with the continued Prali burning in Punjab, ironically being ruled by the AAP government and its appeasement policy towards farmers thereof, due to which the air quality index (AQI) of Delhi NCR region reached 300 plus in the third week of October last.
To shift the blame as usual, Kejriwal took the recourse to gimmickry by ordering blanket ban on fireworks on Diwali, which created uproar, earning backlash for the Chief Minister to insult the Hindu sentiments, which, however, does not matter to him at all. But to his sheer discomfort, the Punjab farmers are now up in arms, against the AAP government for betraying them by not fulfilling the lavish and lofty promises. Na Khuda Hi Mila, Na Visale Sanam; Na Idhar Ke Rahe, Na Udhar Ke Rahe!
(TO BE CONTINUED)