"BJP Hoping For LG’s Favour To Manufacture Majority": Yogendra Yadav

After months of political uncertainty, it seems Delhi will soon have a government of its own. Amidst this politically charged atmosphere, a delegation of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) recently met President Pranab Mukherjee after Lieutenant Governor (LG) Najeeb Jung sought the President's nod to invite the single-largest party, the BJP, to form the government. In this backdrop, BI India’s Manish Kumar had an exclusive interview with Yogendra Yadav, AAP’s senior leader and strategist. Here are the excerpts:

Lieutenant Governor LG Naseeb Jung, in an interview with The Times Of India, said that the efforts for government formation in Delhi were still on. But your party has been demanding to conduct elections at the earliest. What is your reaction on that?
I saw the statement and I was really surprised. I was surprised because there is a very clear-cut situation... the party with the largest number, the BJP, has not staked claim to power. The second largest party, the Aam Aadmi Party, has refused to form the government, and has demanded election. Congress has no chance of forming the government. The composition of the Assembly hasn’t changed as well. Then what is the LG waiting for? That surprises me, and statement like that lends itself to an interpretation that the LG is waiting for ‘something’ to happen, perhaps for some horse trading to take place.

After saying that it does not have the required number to form the government, the BJP has now said that it is open to forming the government if asked by the LG. How do you view this change in BJP’s stance?
This is precisely what is odd here. When the BJP had 32 MLAs in the Assembly, it went to the (Lieutenant) Governor and said that we cannot form the government. Now that it has only 29 members, it says it may be willing (to form the government) if invited by the Lieutenant Governor. At the same time, it is not going to the LG to formally stake a claim. Clearly, they do not have the numbers or the confidence that they have or can get majority in the Assembly. Clearly, they are waiting for some help from the Lieutenant Governor. That is what’s odd about it as if the BJP is hoping that the constitutional office of the LG could favour it and help manufacture a majority that it does not actually enjoy. That reminds us of the older days before the Anti-defection Bill came, when buying and selling of MPs and MLAs used to be a very standard thing. One can only hope that the LG and the BJP are not colluding to take us back to that situation.

In case of another hung Assembly even after fresh elections, would you accept or extend support to either the BJP or the Congress?
This is not just a hypothetical but a super-hypothetical question. We are, at the moment, struggling for the election to be announced. You have assumed that elections have been announced, you have assumed that elections have been held, you have assumed that results are out, and there is no majority…I mean…I don’t think I would like to respond to this super-hypothetical question. I am personally quite confident that if elections are held, Aam Aadmi Party would come in majority. And that is precisely the reason why the BJP is running away from elections.

Kumar Vishwas recently alleged that the BJP had approached him with the offer of making him the chief minister. Why is the party’s top brass silent on the issue?
That’s not true. My colleague Sanjay Singh has actually openly spoken about it. He even named the person. The party has spoken. Any attempt to offer such incentives of any kind is clearly unethical.

I was referring to the party’s top brass – you yourself, Arvind Kejriwal or Manish Sisodia.
You may have one understanding of what the top brass is. But I clearly include Sanjay bhai among the top brass. There is clearly no doubt in anyone’s mind that any form of inducement offered, etc., is simply not acceptable. This is not an ethical conduct and if this is indeed what happened, then this is surely a matter of concern.

Your comment on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 100 days in office.
I have written an article about it, where basically I have said that 100 days is too short a period to come to any definitive conclusion. We have seen some signs…some positive signs as well like the foreign policy, like setting SIT on black money, etc. But signs of worry are overwhelming. The government had made huge promises about inflation, employment and so on, but there’s been no action yet. In fact, when it comes to farmers, there is reverse action. On environment, there has been purely negative action so far. On foreign policy, there is no clear integral view of what is happening. And worst of all, on questions to do with integrity and corruption, the government doesn’t seem to be standing up for the honest officers. Not to forget the question of communalism, where there appears to be a crowd-sourcing of communalism and the government is silently watching it. These are reasons of worry. One can only hope that Modi would learn and improve. The trouble, of course, is that he has closed himself from the possibility of learning because of his authoritarian style of governance. These things, one can hope, would change. And if they do, we can indeed have better governance. Otherwise what the country needs is a genuine alternative kind of opposition.

Can you please elaborate on the “authoritarian style of governance” that you just referred to?
I mean this is no secret that Modi has, in his Cabinet, ministers who do not count for anything. All the crucial decisions about any ministry are taken not by the minister himself but by the Prime Minister. There is strict surveillance of all the key party leaders in the BJP itself. Anyone who can possibly be of any challenge to Modi has been systematically sidelined. These are not signs of a democratic leader, these are not signs of authority. These are signs of authoritarianism. But these are early signs and one can only hope that things will get better later.