New Delhi: In September, two days after walking out on bail in the excise policy case, in a speech where he announced his decision to quit as the Delhi chief minister, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal recounted how Tihar Jail authorities meted out “humiliation” to him by refusing to convey his directions to Lieutenant Governor Vinay Kumar Saxena.
Among the instances Kejriwal listed was the Tihar administration’s refusal to forward his letter to the L-G nominating Atishi as the minister to hoist the Tricolour in his place on Independence Day.
“The Tihar officials warned me saying if I try to approach the L-G again, I will be barred from meeting my family going ahead,” Kejriwal said, as the senior AAP leadership on the dais shouted “shame” in unison.
One leader could be seen wearing a poker face though, even as his Cabinet and party colleagues rose up in disapproval of the treatment Kejriwal faced in prison. Kailash Gahlot, 50, may always have been a man of few words, but his silence on the dais that day rang louder than the noise around him.
After all, it was Gahlot, holding the portfolios of Home and Transport, among others, who was nominated by Saxena to hoist the Tricolour.
Saxena’s decision set tongues wagging in AAP circles as over the months, Gahlot had come to be identified as someone who enjoys a remarkably friction-free equation with the L-G despite the party’s bruising feud with the latter.
In his resignation letter, which he posted on X, Gahlot alleged that “political ambitions have overtaken our commitment towards people, leaving many promises unfulfilled”. “Take for example the Yamuna, which we had promised to transform into a clean river, but never got around to doing it. Now the Yamuna river is perhaps even more polluted than ever before.”
For the AAP, he alleged, fighting for its political agenda had replaced its commitment to uphold people’s rights. “Apart from this, now there are many embarrassing and awkward controversies, like the ‘Sheeshmahal’, which are now making everyone doubt whether we still believe in being the Aam Aadmi … It is now obvious that the real progress for Delhi cannot happen if the Delhi Government spends majority of its time fighting with the Centre,” he wrote.
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‘Hanuman of Kejriwal’
Barely two months ago, after he was made a minister in the new Delhi Cabinet led by Atishi as the CM, Gahlot had posted on X that he would serve the people as the “Hanuman of Kejriwal”.
Gahlot, who hails from Delhi’s Najafgarh, was the AAP’s Jat face in the city. He joined the party ahead of the 2015 assembly polls and went on to represent the Najafgarh constituency as an MLA twice.
A lawyer by profession, he was inducted into the Delhi Cabinet in 2017 following the removal of Kapil Mishra. He was entrusted with the portfolios of Transport, Law and Justice, Administrative Reforms.
Apart from the induction of new buses, including electric vehicles, in the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) fleet, Gahlot also steered the roll out of the Delhi government’s Doorstep Delivery of Public Services scheme. Unlike other ministers, he studiously avoided getting into public spats with the bureaucracy, barring a few exceptions including clashes with the then Law Secretary Sanjay Aggarwal over division of powers in 2019.
By and large though, Gahlot remained a quiet presence in the Cabinet and the party, unlike his vocal colleagues Saurabh Bharadwaj or Atishi. A section of the AAP felt his restraint approach was essentially tactical as the Income Tax (IT) Department and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had opened investigations against him. In 2018, the IT Department had raided 16 properties linked to Gahlot and claimed to have found documents showing evasion of taxes by him amounting to Rs 120 crore, a charge which he vehemently denied. In 2019, the ED attached assets of his brother Harish Gahlot worth Rs 1.4 crore on charges of money laundering.
In 2021, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recommended a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into a DTC deal related to the purchase and annual maintenance contract of 1,000 low-floor buses. In March this year, Gahlot was questioned by the ED in connection with the excise police case. On Sunday, after Gahlot announced his resignation, AAP leaders attributed his move to these cases against him.
“Chief Minister Atishi has accepted his resignation. He had no option but to join the BJP. This is a conspiracy hatched by the BJP. It wants to win the Delhi assembly elections by misusing the ED and CBI,” AAP MLA Durgesh Pathak said in a press conference also attended by Kejriwal, who did not comment on the development.
At the press conference, former BJP MLA Anil Jha joined the AAP.
Meanwhile, an AAP source claimed that the party was unlikely to nominate Gahlot as its candidate from Najafgarh this time, citing “the thin margins by which he won the 2015 and the 2020 polls”. He won in 2015 by a margin of 1,555 votes and 6,231 votes in 2020.
Gahlot’s resignation, however, comes at a time the AAP is trying to regroup ahead of the assembly polls—due in February 2025. He is the third minister to resign from the Delhi Cabinet since 2022, with Rajendra Pal Gautam, who has joined the Congress, being the first, and Raj Kumar Anand, who switched over to the BJP, the second.
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