Kejriwal defends Janta Darbar, says AAP wants to work with people

Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today defended his govt's decision to hold a Janta Darbar at the Delhi Secretariat and said that despite the chaos it could not be called a failure of participative democracy.

Kejriwal made the remarks at a press conference which was held to formally welcome Ashutosh, the former managing editor of IBN7, to the Aam Aadmi Party. Ashutosh had resigned from his post two days ago, but AAP had not confirmed that he had officially joined the party.

Arvind Kejriwal at the Janta Darbar. PTI

Kejriwal's Janta Darbar had ended in chaos due to an unprecedented crowd and the CM had to leave the darbar midway. However, Kejriwal defended his decision to leave midway saying, "There were so many people out there today. At one point, I was afraid of getting crushed which is why I had to leave. I could have asked the police to lathi charge them and get rid of them like it is done in India. But I came out on the roof and asked people to calmly go home and they did. What was wrong in that?"

When asked whether a practice like this was encouraging anarchy and chaos, Kejriwal said that this was participative democracy and to dismiss it as anarchy would be wrong.

He said, "We as a government want to work with the people. I could have put a board outside my office saying public meeting from 10 to 12. My guard would let 15-20 people come in and then tell them at 12, please go now, the time is up. But today when I went to the streets, that's when we got to know how many people want to meet us."

However the Delhi CM admitted that the number of people who had turned up far exceeded their expectations and that the arrangements were done for a far lesser crowd. He said, "We had done arrangements for 500-700 people, but close to 5000-7000 people had turned up instead. Our arrangements were, of course inadequate this time, but we will fix it the next time. To say that participative democracy failed because of this is wrong."

When pointed that other states too hold janta darbars but they don't see the kind of chaos that the Delhi one witnessed, Kejriwal said it was because so many people believed in their government and had thus turned up. "I agree everyone puts a darbar. But not so many people turn up. In our case, people have faith, which is why so many people turned up. I keep saying this again and again, the people have very high expectations from us and we will have to work very hard to live up to them," he pointed out.

Arvind Kejriwal does also did a u-turn on power bill waiver and said that matter was under consideration and the final announcement would be made on Monday.