Maliwal assault case: A 'mistimed' appointment lands AAP in crisis

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had reportedly asked Swati Maliwal to resign from the Rajya Sabha

What should have been a simple matter of a miscommunication over an appointment sought by a Rajya Sabha member to meet the president of her party has turned into a bitter political war between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership, including President Arvind Kejriwal and senior minister Atishi, on one side, and the Rajya Sabha MP from Delhi, Swati Maliwal, on the other. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, has waded into the controversy at the height of election season with the Congress being dragged into it indirectly. Some associated with AAP in its earlier days describe it as the manifestation of a leadership tussle in the party.

Maliwal began her career as convener of the volunteers who were the backbone of India Against Corruption (IAC), a movement whose guiding light was Anna Hazare. She was an associate member of the core committee and used to be invited to sit in all the meetings and was one of those who voted in favour of turning the Hazare-Kejriwal-led agitation into a political party. So, in a sense, she was one of the junior founder-members of AAP.

“In recognition of her work during IAC and the mobilisation during the Nirbhaya case, she was made chief of the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW),” said Sunita Godara, a marathon runner and Asian Games gold medallist who was also a member of the IAC core committee. Godara was one of those who got top sportsmen to sign a petition on corruption in the Commonwealth Games. She dissociated herself from the move to launch AAP, but knows most of the members who opted to become part of the party at the time.

“Maliwal had a crucial role in setting up AAP. So, I have no doubt that when she reached the chief minister’s house without an appointment on May 13 and was prevented from meeting him, she felt humiliated,” Godara said.

Maliwal says she was roughed up by the chief minister’s Personal Assistant Bibhav Kumar, against whom serious charges under the Indian Penal Code’s Sections 354, 506, 509, and 323, which deal with crimes like assault or criminal force on a woman with the intent to outrage her modesty and criminal intimidation, have been filed. He is in police remand. Law and order in Delhi is within the jurisdiction of the central government, which is run by the BJP. Maliwal says AAP has doctored the CCTV footage, the correct version of which showed the assault on her. AAP says she turned up without an appointment at a time she thought she would find Kejriwal alone.

Preeti Sharma Menon, chief of the Maharashtra unit of AAP, said: “We know Bibhav from the days of the agitation. He is incapable of doing the things he has been charged with.” She added: “Swatiji was given everything by the party: Delhi Commission for Women chairmanship, a Rajya Sabha seat ... She was in America and when the (Lok Sabha) campaign started, she was quite inactive. That was the beginning of a plot to attack Arvindji. She reached Arvindji’s house at 8.30 am, knowing Bibhav and others would come a bit later and she would find Arvindji alone. It is Hanumanji’s kripa that Bibhav was there and the one who staved off an attack that was meant for Arvindji.”

Menon added: “The BJP had sent Maliwal on a mission to entangle Kejriwal in a ‘case’. That plot failed.”

The BJP says this is nonsense. Sudhanshu Mittal, a BJP leader from Delhi, said: “To be honest, the BJP is not organised enough to manipulate the victim of a crime and use her to its advantage. And the contradictions are obvious. In her first statement, Maliwal holds Arvind Kejriwal responsible for the assault on her. But in the written complaint, his name is missing … we (BJP) don’t have to do much. AAP has tied itself up in knots.”

“This is unbelievably brazen. We have heard AAP MP Sanjay Singh himself saying -- and not off the cuff, he called a press conference for the purpose -- that what Bibhav Kumar did was misconduct which must be investigated. And yet, AAP leaders, including Atishi, say the misconduct was on Maliwal’s part! Who are we to believe? The victim? Or the perpetrator? Maliwal is the victim here. Yet AAP sides with the perpetrator.”

AAP sources said Sanjay Singh’s intervention was an error of judgement and accepted it weakened their case.

 

Godara says AAP’s handling of Maliwal and Kejriwal’s attitude to it come as no surprise.

“I have seen Kejriwal in action. He is a marvellous manager of people. Many of us decided to leave IAC at various points and he persuaded us all to stay. But it is also true that he has a highly competitive trait: He does not like people who are more accomplished, more intelligent, better-read … he sees them as threats.”

Godara is of the view Maliwal’s reaction is a result of another subtext. Kejriwal reportedly asked Maliwal to resign from the Rajya Sabha (her term will end in 2030) so that her position could be filled by a lawyer who could handle all the legal problems being faced by Kejriwal and his associates. Kejriwal’s choice would have been the Congress’s Abhishek Singhvi, who recently lost the Rajya Sabha election from Himachal Pradesh.

However, Singhvi dismissed this as rumour and speculation. Singhvi told Business Standard: “This is so ridiculous that it should not even be dignified with a response. Baseless speculation started by a particular so-called anchor of a particular channel and picked up by persons here and there because salacious unfounded gossip sounds good. How come the person for whom all this has been done – me – has never even been asked nor knows anything about it?”

As the May 25 election in Delhi draws close, Maliwal is considering the options open to her. Retreat is clearly not an option. But with Kejriwal’s imminent return to prison on June 2, this incident is an intervention AAP could have done without. And a leadership crisis looms.