Bhag­want Mann, Ke­jri­wal set to sign pact to con­join 18 govt depts.
In a shock­ing rev­e­la­tion, mass-cir­cu­la­tion Pun­jabi news­pa­per, ‘Ajit’­to­day claimed that the Bhag­want Singh Mann-led Pun­jab gov­ern­ment and the Arvind Ke­jri­wal-led Delhi gov­ern­ment are on the verge of sign­ing an ac­cord that will con­join 18 de­part­ments of the two states which will then work in tan­dem with each other.

THE 8-PAGE PUN­JAB-DELHI AC­CORD IS LIKELY TO BE SIGNED by the two chief min­is­ters, the news re­port said, and once it comes into ef­fect, it will open flood­gates for the Ke­jri­wal regime to vir­tu­ally run the en­tire Pun­jab ad­min­is­tra­tion from Delhi.

The ac­cord, as re­ported by the news­pa­per, is akin to merg­ing the key gov­ern­ment de­part­ments of the two states.

The ac­cord will al­low the Delhi gov­ern­ment and of­fi­cials com­plete ac­cess to the en­tire data of Pun­jab’s Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, Power, Wa­ter Sup­ply, San­i­ta­tion, En­vi­ron­ment, Pol­lu­tion Con­trol, Hous­ing, Tourism, Hos­pi­tal­ity, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, So­cial Se­cu­rity, Women and Child De­vel­op­ment, Ad­min­is­tra­tive Re­forms, Old Age Pen­sions, In­dus­trial De­vel­op­ment and In­vest­ment, Fis­cal Sta­bil­ity de­part­ments etc, the re­port re­vealed.

The draft ex­plic­itly states that these de­part­ments of the Pun­jab and Delhi gov­ern­ments will for­mu­late joint de­vel­op­ment plans and will ex­e­cute them jointly.

If such an of­fi­cial un­der­stand­ing comes to fruition, it will raise se­ri­ous ques­tions about the au­ton­omy of Pun­jab.

The news­pa­per re­port said since the draft has still not been signed by ei­ther party, it
would re­frain from au­then­ti­cat­ing it, but nev­er­the­less pub­lished a huge pic­ture of
the ti­tle page of the draft on its front page.

Pun­jab’s AAP gov­ern­ment is al­ready un­der a se­vere at­tack for send­ing its power
of­fi­cials to Delhi and tak­ing dic­ta­tion from the Ke­jri­wal gov­ern­ment and its of­fi­cials
as to how its pre-poll promise of 300 units of free power should be im­ple­mented in
the state.

Bhag­want Man­n’s re­peated vis­its to Delhi, os­ten­si­bly to study the so-called ‘Delhi
Mod­el’ for one or the other prob­lem, is­n’t go­ing down very well with the Pun­jabis.

For a party that came to power with a 92/​117 ma­jor­ity, this rou­tine of kow­tow­ing is
go­ing to cost AAP’s Pun­jab lead­er­ship dearly, par­tic­u­larly as its MLAs seem to have
lit­tle free­dom to voice their opin­ions.

The Delhi-Pun­jab AAP Ac­cord will al­low Delhi govt and its of­fi­cials com­plete ac­cess to en­tire data of Pun­jab’s top govt de­part­ments, in­clud­ing Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, Power, Wa­ter Sup­ply, Hous­ing, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, etc.

AAP’s pro­pa­ganda ma­chine is now ex­pected to first ques­tion the cred­i­bil­ity of the
‘Ajit’ re­port, then slips into a de­nial mode and grad­u­ally shifts to­wards de­fend­ing such an un­der­stand­ing be­tween Pun­jab and Delhi gov­ern­ments. Very soon, its lead­ers would be call­ing it the best thing that hap­pened to Pun­jab.

Po­lit­i­cal ex­perts said the is­sue of au­ton­omy is a hot but­ton is­sue in Pun­jab and AAP’s
ef­forts to make the state gov­ern­ment sub­servient to Ke­jri­wal are likely to au­gur well
for the lo­cal lead­er­ship of the party which has to face the elec­torate. ‘Khud­mukhtari’ is a key po­lit­i­cal value in Pun­jab, and Ke­jri­wal could land in a mess by try­ing to be­come the Pun­jab chief min­is­ter by proxy, said a se­nior AAP leader on con­di­tion of anonymity, adding that such clever-by-half tac­tics would make Bhag­want Man­n’s own stand­ing very vul­ner­a­ble. “Re­mem­ber that Bhag­want Mann is the biggest as­set AAP has in Pun­jab. Al­ready, the party had put him in a tough spot where a new chief min­is­ter could not claim any credit for the five Ra­jya Sabha picks from Pun­jab and pre­ferred to main­tain a dis­tance from these wor­thies. The ham-handed ef­forts to run Pun­jab from Delhi will back­fire,” he said.

The op­tics of Pun­jab gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials rou­tinely trav­el­ling to Delhi car­ry­ing
of­fi­cial files and bring­ing back so­lu­tions sanc­ti­fied by Ke­jri­wal is hardly good pol­i­tics.

A for­mal un­der­stand­ing be­tween the two gov­ern­ments is set to trig­ger de­mands
from within the cadre to come clean on who ex­actly is the chief min­is­ter of Pun­jab.