What should we expect from Rekha, Parvesh and Kapil trio? | Faraz Ahmad

A friend of mine, still an active reporter, told some of us soon after the swearing in of the new chief minister of Delhi Rekha Gupta that she is the choice of the Sarsanghchalkak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Mohan Bhagwat. Maybe. I really don’t know.

But if this is true, and I have no reason to disbelieve her report then it may not be difficult for most of us to imagine what kind of a BJP government the RSS/BJP is looking forward to on its return to power after full 27 years.

Apart from Rekha Gupta the new government also has as Deputy Chief Minister Parvesh Verma who along with central minister Anurag Thakur threatened dire consequences to the Dadis of Jamia/Okhla sitting on dharna against the BJP government’s discriminatory law CAA during that biting winter of 2019-20; and no less than Kapil Mishra, the agent provocateur of February 2020 communal violence in North East Delhi causing huge loss of life and property to the poor and lower middle class working Muslims, constituting an overwhelming populace in areas like Mustafabad, most affected by that two-day long violence.
Delhi was declared a state with a legislative assembly by the Congress government at the Centre under P.V. Narasimha Rao and election to the legislative assembly was held. The process of giving Delhi the status of a state was initiated by Rajiv Gandhi. The first chief minister of Delhi was Delhi’s veteran leader and the most well known face of BJP in the national capital, Madan Lal Khurana, who used to be the Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Metropolitan Council (DMC) the precursor to the Delhi Assembly. Jag Parvesh Chandra of Congress used to be the Chief Executive Councillor (CEC). In the DMC. The two fought bitterly in the House. But once out they would sit over tea at the India International Centre (IIC almost every evening, joking and bantering discussing Delhi’s problems as well. There were others in that small group including one time Delhi Lieutenant Governor, later a Union Minister in BJP government Jagmohan and our dear friend, the darling of the media then Arun Jaitley.

I was in the Indian Express then, covering the Delhi government and DMC. Every morning by 7 am, before I was out of bed the phone would ring and Khurana’s secretary would call. My father would receive the call. The voice on the other end would say, “Faraz ji hain? Khurana ji baat karenge.”. He was courtesy and humility personified. And did I ever find any element of communal antipathy to me, merely because I was a Muslim? None, whatsoever.

Later when the first NDA government was formed led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998, Khurana became a Parliamentary Affairs minister. But less than a year later Khurana resigned from the government. Do we remember why? Because in January 1999 a Christian missionary Graham Staines along with his two little children was burnt alive in his closed jeep by a Hindutva activist Dara Singh and Khurana was angry with his own government for refusing to condemn and act against that barbarous act of the Sangh’s first vigilante. Today the man who stood by that murderer Dara Singh and sat on a dharna to defend Dara Singh’s despicable act, Mohan Charan Majhi has been elevated and rewarded by the Sangh and Modi to become the first BJP chief minister in Odisha.

What was the first act of Mohan Majhi’s police? To undress torture and threaten rape on a retired Army officer’s daughter, herself a lawyer and the fiancée of another serving Army officer in a model Police station of Bhubaneshwar because she went along with her Army officer fiancé to that police station at the dead of night to complain of sexual harassment by a group of young men, one of whom, it turned out was closely related to the chief minister.

Khurana’s son has also been elected to the Delhi Assembly from late Khurana’s assembly constituency, Moti Nagar and he is in the good company of Rekha Gupta the new chief minister of Delhi. The moment her name was finalised, her old tweets using abusive and violent language against AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi and the Opposition leaders started appearing, Most of them, she seemed to have hurriedly removed. But some are still around to give a glimpse of what to expect under her leadership, all the big talk of development and welfare apart.

After Khurana had to resign his chief ministership over the Hawala issue, the BJP appointed Sahib Singh Verma as the Delhi chief minister. He made such a mess of Delhi with power cuts and water scarcity to such an extent that as the elections of 1998 approached to save the day Sahib Singh was summarily removed and replaced by Sushma Swaraj. Sahib Singh may not have been a competent administrator or politician, but he was a simple and courteous person and when he learnt that I had studied at AMU he proudly recalled his days at AMU where he studied and qualified in Library Science. Similarly, Sushma Swaraj was always pleasant and courteous whenever I had to interact with her, which was quite often since I was covering BJP then.

But we are now in Bhagwat/Modi era where the more abusive and aggressive you demonstrate yourself, the more acceptable you are to their dispensation. See the rise of Anurag Thakur, Nirmala Sitharaman, Kiren Rijiju or that twit Nishikant Dubey. What makes them so important, except their aggression and oral violence. In fact, a turncoat like Hemant Biswa Sarma has to doubly prove his loyalty by targeting Muslims with greater vigour and intensity all the time. Following in Sarma’s footsteps is our dear Vice President, who has changed how many parties, is difficult to keep a track. But then if he has to aim for Rashtrapati Bhawan one day, he can’t unless he shows he is more loyal than the King.

In this background, is it too much to speculate that the Rekha Gupta led government is likely to follow in footsteps of the UP chief minister. A political pundit pointed out how at the Ramlila Ground swearing in of Rekha Gupta and her team, while most NDA chief ministers were present, only two stayed away. One, the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who they said had to present his government budget that day. The other was Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Someone speculated that Nitish who is being sent signals from RJD president Lalu Prasad to return to the secular fold could be feeling secular pangs once more and that is why he might have deliberately kept away from Delhi swearing-in as well as the meeting of NDA chief ministers and Deputy chief ministers.

A video of the swearing-in ceremony showed how the Prime Minister expressed his displeasure by not acknowledging JD-U leader Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lalan’s greetings while effusively greeting Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde and Andhra chief minister Chandrababu Naidu. Modi is an unforgiving man. He expressed his displeasure there. Let’s watch for his next action what with Bihar elections scheduled end of this year.