Even before he could unfurl the tiranga at the forthcoming Republic Day, Arvind Kejriwal’s 20-day old Government has been jolted by MLA Vinod Kumar Binny who read out a virtual chargesheet against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its leadership at a crowded Press conference on Thursday morning. Amidst rumours that four other MLAs are ‘in touch’ with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the AAP may be destined to be the bud that did not bloom in the maelstrom of Indian politics. Should its Delhi experiment flounder, the AAP’s national ambitions may end before taking off, notwithstanding the impressive crowd that came to look at Kumar Vishwas in Amethi.

It remains to be seen if Vinod Kumar Binny, whose expulsion from the party is a near certainty, proves to be a puissant warrior who lives to fight another day, or fades away (he is a three time MLA). The BJP, doubtless delighted by this post-Makar Sankranti bonanza that may herald the end of its political winter in the Capital, has wisely presented a sombre face over the developments. State unit president Vijay Goel has said that if the AAP Government fell, it would be due to its own internal contradictions. This watch and wait policy, rather than a jostle to form the Government, will pay the party rich dividends at the time of the forthcoming Lok Sabha poll.

In a stunning insight into the mind of Arvind Kejriwal, whose national ambitions and foreign associations create doubts about a possible west-sponsored Coloured Revolution to thwart the BJP, Binny revealed that the Chief Minister is not serious about governing Delhi and is resorting to gimmicks to ‘pass time’ until the Election Commission announces the dates of the Parliamentary elections and the model code of conduct kicks in. He will then be ‘protected’ from delivering on his poll promises. Till then, Binny predicted, Kejriwal would only give benefits to some persons and ‘fool the people’ as best as he can.

Strenuously denying that he was sulking over denial of a ministerial berth or a Lok Sabha ticket, the grassroots leader whose mohalla sabhas became the prototype for the AAP’s electoral blitzkrieg in Delhi, said he was unhappy over the party’s style of governance and failure to seriously deliver on its electoral promises. A handful of persons, Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Kumar Vishwas decide everything mutually, and the rest is just showbiz (natak) for public consumption.

For instance, he said, the AAP publicly campaigned that it would provide 700 kilolitres of water free to every household. But in the manifesto, which most people neither saw nor read, they quietly introduced a caveat that those who consumed even one litre above 700kl would have to pay for the entire quantity. Similarly, in the case of electricity, what was promised was a uniform 50 per cent reduction in tariff to all citizens. But rather than seriously studying and implementing this promise, Kejriwal hastily announced 400 units free to certain households and left the bulk of his voters high and dry. More than 10 lakh families now feel cheated, he said.

The promise to citizens who believed in the party and did not pay their hefty, unjustified, water and electricity bills was that all cases registered against them would be withdrawn and their bills would be waived. But immature statements by party leaders, in lieu of homework, have put these citizens in a worse position than before. This callous neglect extended to the contract labour employed by the Government in different departments, who had hoped for speedy regularisation.

Pointing out that the AAP had asked the people for three months time to get a handle on the affairs of the city, he said the haste to show some (unreal) achievement while avoiding serious attention to Delhi’s problems was solely due to the Lok Sabha election. That is why the party failed to prioritise the commando force that was supposed to make women safe in the city, and tried to shake off responsibility in the gruesome rape of a Danish tourist recently. Yet the same AAP would have come on the streets if another party was in power in Delhi.

Binny confirmed rumours circulating before the formation of the Government in Delhi to the effect that the Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit, son of former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, was a ‘great friend’ of Arvind Kejriwal. That is why the issue of corruption, on which AAP rose to power, was quickly scuttled. Not a single enquiry has been ordered into the endless issues of corruption in recent years, he pointed out, though Kejriwal had campaigned vociferously that he had ‘proof’ of many wrong doings. Now, he alleged, Congress leaders had a hand in every decision of the party.

Ridiculing the policy of soliciting public opinion before making any important decisions, Binny said that all decisions were taken behind closed doors by a coterie of top leaders who had a long association with each other, and the rest was just drama. Giving examples, he said that the decision regarding who would contest from which seat (Binny himself, Manish Sisodia, Kumar Vishwas, Shazia Ilmi, Arvind Kejriwal, etc) was already taken, but there was a huge show of gathering thousand signatures from each constituency, giving people a false sense of participation, and pretending the decision would be taken after due consultation. Were this not true, he said, why would Kumar Vishwas hold a rally in Amethi? He mocked at the party’s simplicity project, saying all Ministers have quietly taken VIP numbers for their big cars and would have happily moved into big bungalows but for the public outcry.

The effect of the Binny sledgehammer, duly magnified by television and the Internet, has torn a major hole in the ethical pretences of the AAP and irreparably damaged its all-India ambitions. The cracks revealed by Binny and the other disgruntled MLAs cannot be healed or papered over indefinitely. It is now fully evident that the AAP core leadership was using Delhi as a springboard for the 2014 Parliamentary election, and Binny’s revolt has punctured its fast-moving steamboat. Hence, action against Binny is inevitable – even if others are spared – because the situation has to be salvaged without loss of time.

But once Binny is expelled, the split between those who want to govern Delhi and those who want to catapult to a larger platform will be wide open. And the latter may emerge as the loser. Ships that develop a leak may limp successfully to the shore; they do not march into the wide ocean. Yet this is what Yogendra Yadav seems determined to do with his statement that “India was on the verge of a political transformation” which “had given other political parties the jitters”. As of now, it is the AAP which is having convulsions, while sounds of soft laughter can be heard in other quarters.