The reaction of the Indian intelligentsia to the Aam Aadmi Party’s defeat in the Vidhan Sabha elections has highlighted one of the least attractive features of the Indian political class. This is its willingness to look for explanations for political setbacks that do not disturb its peace of mind by forcing it to confront harsh truths.
This tendency was highlighted by the remarks of three former supporters and close advisers of Kejriwal, whose personal morality and political sagacity is beyond reproach. These are Yogendra Yadav, the founder of Lokniti, the most irreproachable polling agency in the country; Ashutosh, the celebrated anchor of Satya Hindi Television’s most watched news analysis programs, who was Kejriwal’s right hand man during the formation of AAP, and Prashant Bhushan, who is India’s leading human rights lawyer.
Former supporters blame Kejriwal
All three blamed not just the (AAP), but Arvind Kejriwal personally, for the party’s defeat. Yadav’s criticism was perhaps the mildest of the trio: He claimed that the AAP had lost its “Moral Sheen” because it had begun to tolerate corruption and high-handedness within the party.
Ashutosh also ascribed the defeat to the Aam Admi party having lost sight of the ideals with which it was created, particularly its drive against corruption and determination to change the life of the common man, but had lost its way somewhere and become just another political party.
Prashant Bhushan, arguably the bravest human rights lawyer in India, also held Kejriwal responsible for the Delhi poll debacle. In a post on X, he accused Kejriwal of changing the nature of AAP after it was founded as a transparent platform for alternative politics, beginning to travel in luxury cars (and) binning 33 detailed policy reports of expert committees set up by AAP, saying that the party would adopt expedient policies “when the time comes.”
Finally, none of the three challenged the BJP’s assertion that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had sanctioned the expenditure of Rs 63 crores for building a new ‘house’ for him and his family to live in, at 6 Flagstaff Road in Old Delhi out of a growing hubris and disregard for the opinions of others in his party.
BJP’s propaganda machine remained unchallenged
They did not therefore challenge the BJP’s propaganda machine when it promptly dubbed the new house as Kejriwal’s “Sheesh Mahal”. Several other commentators therefore adopted the term uncritically, as shorthand for describing Kejriwal’s double standards.
Not one of them commented on the most glaring anomaly in these results: that if a large proportion of the AAP’s former supporters were disappointed by its performance, or disillusioned with Kejriwal, why did they not give their vote to the Congress?
Why did all of them give their vote instead to a party that has done nothing except make empty promises to the nation on incomes and employment, and has not governed Delhi in 27 years?
Nor did any of them voice a single doubt, or suspicion, that BJP karyakartas in Delhi may have used the same tactics, which the saffron party has been accused of using in Maharashtra – deleting names of thousands of genuine voters from each constituency.
Had any journalist taken the trouble to investigate the Sheesh Mahal allegation thoroughly, he or she would have had a very different story to tell. First, the decision to replace the existing Bungalow at 6 Flagstaff Road was taken more than 6 years after Kejriwal had moved into it. This had to be done because the existing Bungalow was falling to pieces. It had been built 80 years earlier in 1942 and, even then, had never been intended to be anything other than a private residence.
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It was a small single floor house with a central living-cum-dining room and three bedrooms, of a design that the British had used for the houses allotted to deputy secretary level officers in their government. Its only outhouses, therefore, were the six or so servants’ quarters that used to accompany houses of this class in British India.
In 2015 it was lying vacant – itself an anomaly that no journalist questioned the reason for – but its previous occupant had been the Deputy speaker of the Delhi Vidhan Sabha, so Kejriwal felt no hesitation in choosing it. The only change he made to it was to turn the small front lobby of the house into an informal living room in which he could meet his visitors, and senior members of his party.
Kejriwal had done so because he did not wish to live at 3 Motilal Nehru Marg, in the heart of British New Delhi, a road on which ex-prime ministers, judges of the Supreme court, and secretaries of central government departments lived, and where Shiela Dixit, his predecessor had lived during her chief ministership.
6 Flagstaff Road house was already in a dilapidated state
When Kejriwal moved into the house, it was already in a dilapidated state, but he did nothing to improve its condition till 2020 when heavy rains made the ceiling cave in. Kejriwal had ignored three previous smaller cave-ins in different parts of the house, one of which had occurred in his parents’ bedroom, endangering their lives. But the 2020 roof collapse triggered a safety audit by the PWD, which insisted that the house had to be completely rebuilt.
The first order for rebuilding and furbishing 6 Flagstaff Road was therefore issued on September 09, 2020 and was for Rs 7.09 crores. But that estimate had not taken into account the need for the CM’s official residence to have a permanent Home office and residential quarters for his security detail. Kejriwal had realised, within days of moving into Flagstaff Road that a chief minister’s home cannot be truly private, but must contain accommodation for a full-fledged mini-secretariat, and a security detail.
But he had insisted on constructing only temporary clapboard shacks to meet the two needs till the COVID pandemic closed the Delhi Secretariat and forced him to work entirely from home. That was almost certainly the reason why his government decided to kill two birds with one stone and make 6 Flagstaff Road the permanent Chief Minister’s residence in Delhi.
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The need to build additional pukka buldings, in addition to a permanent house for the chief Minister of a State, pushed up the total cost to Rs. 44 crores. Of this, Rs. 19.22 crores was accounted for by the home office (also called a camp office) where the chief Minister could work and meet guests.
Apart from this. Rs. 19 crores of the BJP’s Rs 63 crore estimate was the notional cost of the additional land that had to be acquired to house the work and security related staff and facilities. Acquiring this did not involve any cash transaction because the land already belonged to the central government. But the BJP did not mention this and no journalist bothered (or dared) to ask.
The cost of the remainder of the complex was therefore just over Rs 24 crores. This was for a spacious, two-storey permanent government house, similar in size to the homes the British had built for their seniormost officials on what is now Rajaji Marg in New Delhi.
Renovation cost of Modi’s residential house and office much higher
Compared to this, the “renovation” cost of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residential house and office at 5 and 7 Race course road when he moved in had begun at Rs 27 crores and ended at Rs 89 crores!
The disparity becomes even more striking when we remember that the Flagstaff Road house was utterly dilapidated and close to the end of its natural life when it began to be renovated, but 5 and 7 Race Course road, the residence and home office of the prime minster were already in perfect condition because they had housed five prime ministers over the previous 30 years.
But even this huge difference does not measure the gap in size between the egos of Modi and Kejriwal. The real yardstick is the disparity between the Rs. 44 crore cost of the permanent residence of the Chief Minister of Delhi, and the Rs. 467 crores that the Modi government is spending on a new residence for the Prime Minister in the Central Vista complex. This residence was initially expected to cost ₹360 crores and would take 21 months to build.
But within months that estimate ballooned further to Rs 467 crores because PM Modi wanted underground tunnels leading from it to the new Parliament House and the Prime Minister’s Office in South block to be added to the project.
It is a grim reminder of how far our democracy has slipped towards authoritarianism, that no English or Hindi newspaper or TV anchor who has repeatedly referred to Kejriwal’s Sheesh Mahal, has dared to call the new PM’s house that is nearing completion a “Heera Mahal”.
