Gopal Subramanium adds to AAP’s bizarre acts

It comes as no surprise that the Centre has dismissed a plea by Mr Gopal Subramanium — who heads a panel constituted by the Delhi Government to probe the affairs of the Delhi & District Cricket Association — seeking the National Security Advisor's assistance in the investigation. The Union Home Ministry has reportedly termed the letter written by the former Solicitor General of India directly to the NSA as “silly” and “unprecedented”. No words could have better described the situation. Being one of the country's foremost legal minds, Mr Subramanium should have known better than to directly write to the National Security Advisor asking for his help, and that too on the unsubstantiated and pre-judged premise that the investigation could lead to issues of national security. The probe panel chief sought NSA Ajit Doval's assistance in the selection of “five of the best officers of the Intelligence Bureau, who should be of the level of Joint Director and below”. This is bizarre, to say the least. In the first place, the chosen channel of communication was wrong; the NSA does not directly correspond with the head of an inquiry commission a State Government sets (and here even the constitutional validity of the Aam Aadmi Party Government's power to do so without securing a green signal from the Centre is in doubt). The second point is that a State Government cannot seek the services of Central officers for its own inquiries. The third issue is that the Intelligence Bureau is not even an investigation agency and, therefore, seeking the agency's officers for a probe is ridiculous. But the bizarre and the ridiculous are not matters that bother either Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's Government or, it seems now, even Mr Subramanium. It is unfortunate that the former Solicitor General is becoming an instrument in the hands of the Delhi regime in the latter's bid to sustain its vicious campaign against the Narendra Modi Government and Central agencies in particular. The Chief Minister has targeted everyone — from Prime Minister Modi to Union Minister for Home Affairs Rajnath Singh to lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung to Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi to the Central Bureau of Investigation, on a variety of issues ever since he assumed office.

Of course, the Union Government's peremptory rejection of Mr Subramanium's letter will be exploited by Mr Kejriwal and his supporters as yet another instance of the Centre's refusal to ‘cooperate' with an elected State Government; a blow to the ‘federal spirit of the Constitution'; and ‘proof' of the complicity of persons in high places in the DDCA case that is sought to be probed. The Chief Minister will use the development to take his confrontation with the Centre to the next high level. Mr Kejriwal wants to keep the pot boiling. He is busy discovering new ways all his waking hours to engage the Union Government in a verbal battle; the little free time he gets is used for the pretence of governance. His failures on governance are too many to be listed here. It's no wonder that people have begun questioning whether they gave a massive mandate to the Aam Aadmi Party to conduct a running feud with the Centre or to administer Delhi. The Chief Minister must see reason before it’s too late.