A letter to Arvind Kejriwal

Dear Arvind Kejriwal,

We are now at cross roads.

We have three choices as everyone knows and has pointed out to you.

1. We can allow BJP to form a minority government which they have condescendingly refused to accept since no other party will give them outside help.

2. We can ourselves attempt to cobble a minority government which you people have rightly refused to do.

3. Since no one is in the majority we could allow the Governor General to advise a re poll, which would probably occur with the Lok Sabha polls in April / May 2014.

However, there is a fourth choice.

When India achieved, independence, Gandhiji had advised to dissolve the Congress party and form a nationalist government. I suggest we follow that advise in Delhi.

Suddenly it will be noted that the BJP has appeared to turn a new leaf. They have more or less copied our manifesto and hoisted an apparently honest chief minister in place of Vijay Goel. Kiran Bedi is attempting to broker in such a solution. We should give it a thought.

The elections are some 6 months away and the masses are very fickle as Shakespeare said in his play Julius Caesar. Six months hence, we do not know whether the masses will remain with us. Remember, how fast the masses left Anna in 2011. Further people came from all over india and the world to support you in this cause taking paid/unpaid leave. Next time circumstances may not permit them to come.

Then there is the question of finance. It took us a whole year to collect 20 crores to cover our election expenses. How soon will be able to recoup the money from the masses?

Presently the Congress is a demoralised force and the Modi wave is rising. Six month on, we do not know which way the wind will blow although people expect the Modi wave to become stronger. In this election. since only Delhi matters were involved people voted for AAP. Six months hence, when the Lok Sabha elections will be clubbed, people may vote for one party for both MP and MLA.

I agree, we have taken a vow not to deal with either the Congress or the BJP. But as in life, many times we may have to take one step back to take two steps forward.

If we plan to move forward during the Lok Sabha elections we have to prove ourselves. To prove ourselves, we have to show that we can govern as we have promised in our manifesto. On the basis of the common items in our and BJP manifesto we can draw up a program.

BJP had promised 30 % reduction and we had promised 50 % reduction. We could compromise on 40%.

Same thing could go for the water supply and other items.

It would become a competition as to which ministers perform better and the people can judge for themselves. We could also keep a check and expose any corrupt practises they my try to start.

However, I wouldn't want you take the responsibility yourself. Why not allow the people who voted for you take the decision. We have a complete data bank of people who may have voted for us through emc3 and other arrangements we made to phone the people of Delhi.

I agree that all the 5 lakh people who gave us YES votes may have not voted for AAP. As per the votes we should have got at least 50 seats but instead we got only 28 seats. That means many of the YES voters finally did not vote for us. However, that is immaterial. They had at least promised to vote for AAP.

Let us get their votes through SMS whether we should form a government, YES/ NO.

We did this before the formation of our political party. Let do it again to know from them whether under the present circumstances, we should form a government. We have said we are people's representative. Let us take the views of those who voted for us and act accordingly. If they say YES, then we can give the green signal to Kiran Bedi to mediate on the basis of a minimum programme.

Best regards,

Radheshyam Sharma