 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I have with me in the studio today, Aadheshi Marlenam. She is here in two capacities. I'm going to talk to her in the first part of this discussion on her role as a spokesperson and the only woman in the Political Affairs Committee of the Armadhani Party. So I'm going to talk to her about politics and ask her about recent developments in the political situation. In the second part of this interview, we're going to talk about her another avatar of Aadheshi Marlenam. That is that of a person engaged in education and trying to change the education system. She herself has a brilliant track record. She topped the University of Delhi as an undergraduate student in history. She went and studied in Oxford University on scholarships, the Shivni Fellowship. She was a Rhodes Scholar. Her parents are both academics and scholars, teachers of history, professors of history at the University of Delhi. Both Marxists because of which you have your surname. Second name. Your surname is still Singh but Marlenam as in Marx and Lenin. Thank you Aadheshi for coming here. I want to first ask you a little bit about this big brouhaha that took place. You had a group of bureaucrats who said, we're not on strike. And you had the Chief Minister of Delhi, your leader, Arvind Kejriwan saying they are on strike. And on the 11th of July, the Assembly of Delhi accepted a resolution demanding full statehood for the national capital. Arvind Kejriwan together with the Deputy Chief Minister Manish Surya, the Public Works Department Minister Satyendra Jain, the Labour Minister Gopal Rai had this quote-unquote dharna inside a room in the secretariat of the left-wing governor Sri Anil Baijal. Every day it was making the news. And what happened in the Bhardhiyanta Party, your political opponents then marched on to Mr. Kejriwal's residence. They said, Kejriwal, drama bant karo. And then we had what seemed to me and to many others an orchestrated agitation which failed to serve any purpose. Would you agree with my interpretation? What purpose did this entire episode serve? I think to understand this, we need to understand that the strike by the IES officers, and yes, it was a strike, because the IES conduct rules themselves say that it's not just mass observance of leave that's a strike. Any pen down, any sit down, token or even slow down are also strikes. But that word is not used, correct me by wrong? Striking work. But the IES officers themselves admitted that they are not coming to ministers' meetings, that they are not following instructions by the ministers, that they are not answering their phone calls. As per the democratic system in our country, if I still remember correctly that policies and directions have to come from the elected government and it is the job of the bureaucrats to implement it. And the bureaucrats were openly saying that no, we are not going to listen to what the ministers say. If this is not a strike, then what is a strike? At a press conference, the officers of the Indian administrative service belonging to the Agmut Kader, I think that's the Arunachal Goa, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Mizoram, Union Territories, and there's also another one called Dhaniks, the Delhi, Andaman and Niko Baral in civil service. The officers said they did not feel safe attending meetings. All of this happened because of the alleged attack on Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash by ministers. And finally, it was only after the Chief Minister formally stated, and I quote him, I will ensure their safety and security with all the powers and resources available at my command, the officers are part of my family, that finally things cool down. I mean, what prevented Mr. Kejriwal from making this assurance earlier? What makes you think that this assurance was not made earlier? And I think that to understand what happened when, why did Mr. Kejriwal sit on Dharna for nine days? How were IES officers on strike for 119 days? These cannot be seen as single incidents. They have to be seen in the larger context of how the central government, the BJP-run central government, has been trying to disrupt the functioning of the Amadwe Party government in Delhi ever since the Amadwe Party government was formed. Which is February of 2015, when the Amadwe Party came to power with a huge majority, 67 out of 70. Yes. Now, one of the things that is often said, and it has been raised in the past 15 days, past few weeks as well, is that how is it that Sheila Dixit could function within the same constraints? And how is it that Arvind Kejriwal cannot? In fact, Mrs. Sheila Dixit has said so herself. She's been Chief Minister, correct me if I'm wrong, for 15 long years. And she went on record saying, yes, we have problems, we also want full statehood. But we never had this kind of a stalemate where the administration, you know, sort of, there was a complete paralysis of administration. That's because Sheila Dixit, despite not having full statehood, had two important powers that was snatched away from the Amadwe Party government in May 2015. Number one, the anti-corruption branch. This had been with the elected government of Delhi since 1992, since Delhi got its first elected government. But in May 2015, the anti-corruption branch, I think because it's activity in suspending a lot of corrupt officers because of its inquiries. Maybe it had something to do with the FIR that was lodged against people including the richest man in India. Am I correct, Mr. Mukesh Ambani? Maybe that's whom the central government was protecting. But I don't know if you know this, but the anti-corruption branch was taken over by sending paramilitary forces. CRPF was sent over to take a department over of the Delhi government. Number one. Number two, the ability to take departmental action inquiries, vigilance inquiries and post and transfer officers, which comes under the umbrella of what is called services, was also taken away from the elected government of Delhi. And then I stop you. Again, there's a history to it. In 2015, when the then elected governor of Delhi was Najeeb Jang. And that time itself, relations were very, very strained. And Najeeb Jang appointed Shakuntala Gamlin as the acting chief secretary even though Mr. K. J. Walid objected to her appointment and also alleged that she was close to people with some of these power distribution companies. Then the LG turned down the proposal to appoint Mr. Ramesh Negi. And then there was a clash over the appointment of Mr. K. K. Sharma as chief secretary. And all of this eventually led to finally the appointment of the ACB. Again, Mr. K. J. Wal proposed the name of Mr. Yadav, SS Yadav, but it was rejected. And Mr. Meena, MS Meena was appointed. So we have a long history, isn't this? And this history, if you interestingly see, is very different from the history that was there with Shila Dixit. When Shila Dixit was the chief minister, she got to decide who would be the officers and what departments they would be posted in. And once there was a dispute when Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister when Shila Dixit wanted one officer as the chief secretary and the left-wing governor another. And the prime minister said that it was the elected chief minister who should have her way. So you are saying it's not just the ACB, but the power to appoint important bureaucrats. Or even in case of any corruptions to have any departmental inquiries against them. So now what you have as a situation in Delhi is that the bureaucracy in the Delhi government which is supposed to implement the directions of the elected government of Delhi is controlled entirely by the nominee of the central government, which is the LG. So we have now reached a situation in Delhi where the IES officers are not listening to what the elected government is saying or following the directions about the elected government is saying but are at the beck and call of the left-wing governor. People say the strain in the relationship between the Delhi government of the Ahmadini Party and the officers of the Indian administrative service has a longer history. I'll give you an example. In December 2015, the Danix officers, Delhi, Andhraban, Nekobar, Ireland and civil services officers, they went on a mass leave. Why? They objected to this plan of odd even the scheme to remove cars which had the last number, one minute, one minute, one minute. But tell me. Tell me. And the following year also there was a resolution passed by the IES and the Danix officers saying they were being humiliated and Mr. KG Wal and Mr. Sisodia, they both, you know, said that they are being used by the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi to target them. Mr. KG Wal even described them as the B team of the BJP. Now that's also one way of, you can say, attacking them and describing them as the B team of the ruling party. See, what you need to understand is that this is not about a battle between the Ahmadini Party and any specific bureaucrats. As I said, this is a part of a much larger battle. Have you ever heard of any IES officers, any government bureaucrats going on strike? They don't. They don't even go on strike for a day. A strike for 119 days where IES officers are issuing press releases, going on record saying that they are not attending ministers. They hadn't press conference at the press club. Absolutely. So the fact that IES officers are going on strike and openly willing to declare that they have not attended a single minister's meeting for 119 days cannot happen without the support of the central government who is their carder controlling authority. So this is not about a battle between the elected government of Delhi and the bureaucracy. This is a much larger issue about how the central government has been trying to disrupt the work of the Ahmadini Party government and it's not just in Delhi. You have to see how the central, the BJP run central government is using the office of the governor and the left-wing governor in different states. You see exactly the same situation in Pondicherry where the elected chief minister every few days keeps on saying who maybe has a specific love for Mr. Advin Kejdi while after all she was also the chief ministerial candidate of the Mahathe Janata Party for the Delhi elections. Yes, but it's not just here. You can see what happened in Karnataka. You can see how the office of the governor was misused. In Arunachal Pradesh, in Uttarakhand where decisions regarding president's rule were finally struck down in court. One minute. Let's again take a step back. Alright, let's stick to Delhi. Now, right through 2017, the relations between the bureaucracy and the Ahmadini Party government have been steadily deteriorating. Why? Because according to the officers, the Ahmadini Party MLA's have been demanding jail terms. Why? The drains have not been desilted. Okay. So Ashwini Kumar, the principal secretary of the public works department action is sought against him. The chief secretary, Mr. Kutty, refuses to start proceedings. Everything from metro work and increasing the fare. Can I ask you one thing? You're also a citizen of Delhi. Do you not want that before the monsoon season arrives all drains in Delhi are desilted so that our roads don't get waterlogged? So when the PWD minister demands that drains are desilted, you see there's an IES officer cannot say, I will take six months for this. This desilting needs to happen before the monsoon starts. In fact, it's going to be our friends in the media as the desilting does not happen. It's the elected government who's going to be asked questions as it should be in a democracy. But if the elected government has to function in the interests of the citizens of Delhi, then it has to have a bureaucracy that is willing to listen to it. If the drains do not get desilted, it is not that the PWD minister or the MLA's of Delhi are personally affected. It's the citizens of Delhi who have to bear the consequences of this. Okay, let's move on a little bit. While Mr. Kejriwal was agitating inside a room, air conditioned room, I understand, in the left-wing governance secretariat, four opposition chief ministers, four chief ministers. Mr. West Bengal, Ms. Mamta Banerjee, the chief minister of Kerala, belonging to the Communist Party of India, Marxist, Mr. Peenadayi Vijayan, who are otherwise political opponents. Mr. Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh and Mr. Kumaraswamy of Karnataka. They all came together. They had a joint press conference. They were here on account of a meeting of the Niti Ayog and they told the Prime Minister that this is a constitutional crisis. It seemed to have had absolutely no effect. But how come all this happened? They were denied permission to visit them. They met his wife instead at his residence. And finally, this constitutional crisis evaporates. I think what one needs to understand is that, as I was saying to you earlier, what we are seeing in Delhi is representative of the infringement of the federal structure that the BJP is undertaking throughout the country. In Delhi, it's more acute. One, because the Ahmadi Party seems to rival the BJP more than all other parties. But number two, because the governance structure of Delhi allows the central government more interference. But one can see exactly the same pattern in Pondicherry with the Lieutenant Governor as I shared earlier. One could see how in Karnataka, the BJP was almost illegally asked to come and form the government. One can see how President's Root was imposed in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh and it was the court that had to intervene. So what one has here is the fact that the office of the Governor or the Lieutenant Governor, who's a nominee of the central government, is being used to erode the powers of state governments. And I think that is the reason why these four Chief Ministers from four different political parties, none of whom are closely aligned to the Ahmadi Party. Some of them are little more, some of them are little less. Absolutely. But not just these four Chief Ministers, a number of regional parties, be it Mr. Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Tejaswi Yadav of RGD, many regional parties came forward to actually support the Ahmadi Party. So you see this as some sort of a personal vendetta being unleashed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He still can't get over the fact that the same person who he described as a Maoist of sorts... Urban Nuxalite. Urban Nuxalite. Did he use that phrase? He used the word Nuxalite. Nuxalite. Now you're adding Urban Nuxalite, no problem. The point is, after February 2015, yeah, it's been like more than three years and he still hasn't got over the fact that in Delhi the Bharti Janta Party suffered a humiliating defeat. There seems to be no other explanation. I think that till the BJP fought elections in Delhi from 2014 onwards, BJP was winning election after election. And I think it's only once they reached Delhi that we reached a point where the Ashwami of the BJP was put forward. But then after that Bihar happened, after that Gujarat happened, after that Karnataka happened, there were by-elections in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, etc. Why should he still be nurturing and nursing such a grouse against the Ahmadi Party and Mr. K. Triwani? I think one, it was quite a humiliating defeat. It was humiliating in the sense that the BJP was down to three MLAs in the Delhi Assembly. And it was a resounding mandate for the Ahmadi Party. Number two, I think what one needs to understand is that Ahmadi Party does not represent business as usual in politics. Ahmadi Party is still an outsider. We filed a case against the richest man in the country, Mr. K. Triwani. But how would you describe it? Everybody says the Ahmadi Party really has no ideology. It's more interested in stunts. It's more interested in quote-unquote drama earlier. At that time, it was out on the streets outside Rael Bhavan and Shastri Bhavan. This time, it was inside an air-conditioned room inside the LG's office. I mean, K. Triwal, this is all he can do. It's just drama-bazhi as it's called. I think one needs to see the governance track record of this government in the past three and a half years to be able to make any comment on this. And I think that despite all attempts by the central government to disrupt the functioning of our government, I think that there has been a remarkable performance by the Ahmadi Party government on several fronts. Okay. We're going to talk in greater detail in the next part of this interview about education. But tell me, how do you see the role of the Congress in this recent episode? At one level, everybody, including the Congress, they talk about opposition unity. They talk about sinking our differences, finding common ground to oppose the Bharti Janta Party and Mr. Narendra Modi. It comes to Delhi, the Congress, the silence of the Congress was deafening. In fact, on the contrary, the Congress came out as we discussed earlier, Mrs. Sheila Dixit came out and said, no, we're not going to go along with the Ahmadi Party on this. How do you read the silence of the Congress party in this entire episode, which you describe as an attack on the federal structure of this country? I think if you see the Congress in Delhi, in Delhi, the Congress and the BJP operate in symphony with each other. You can see this. That the Congress will deny. But I can give you multiple examples of this. In terms of stalling the work of the Ahmadi Party, Mr. Ajay Makan will file a complaint, either with the ACB or with some organ of the central government. Based on that complaint, the LG will order an inquiry. And based on that inquiry, without the result of that inquiry coming out, that policy would be put to a halt. The Mahalla clinics were stopped precisely by this modus operandi. The CCTVs being installed in Delhi were stopped by that modus operandi. That's another story. I'm very unhappy with the CCTV in school story, but I'm going to come to that later. So I'm saying that... One minute, one minute. You can see that this operation of the Congress and the BJP actually happens in harmony with each other. Adishi, there are local issues. There are national issues. Ms. Mamta Banerjee and Mr. Vijayan come together on a special occasion. Now, I'm saying, what is this? I mean, where are the differences? Where are the areas of agreement? And, I mean, look at Delhi and look at national politics. I mean, you can say, let me draw an analogy which you may not like. Today, for two individuals who are very close to Mr. Arvind K. G. Wal once upon a time, Mr. Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yathab. You know them very well. I know them very well. For them, Arvind K. G. Wal is a bigger enemy than anybody else, it seems to me. So this whole notion of my enemy, in politics, your enemy is my friend or your friend is your enemy. I mean, this whole, I'm trying to understand. I want you to put it in a certain perspective. This whole thing about local issues, national issues, coming together on certain issues, while retaining the freedom to oppose yourself on another. I think that why the Congress did not support this is a question finally Congress will have to answer. But I do think that the Congress should have come out in support because this was not about, as I said. And continue to oppose the Amadwee Party in Delhi. Absolutely. Because this was a larger question of principle of how the central government is infringing upon the rights of a state government. For example, at every instance, be it Goa, be it Manipur, be it Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Amadwee Party came out on the issue opposed the role played by the central government irrespective of the parties involved. And I believe that Congress should have done the same. But I think Congress in Delhi has not been able to, just as BJP has not been able to sort of swallow the defeat in 2015, I think the same probably holds true for the Congress. I think Congress reduced to having no MLA's in the Delhi assembly. So it was to ensure that as and when the next general election, as and when the next assembly elections take place in 2020, Amadwee Party becomes weaker. But which is unfortunate because I think here we are talking about a much larger issue of the federal structure of the country. And I do believe that Congress should have come forward on this issue. They may not support us in Delhi, which is fine. They are an electoral opponent. But on a matter of principle, a stand definitely should be included. My last question in this segment. At the end of the day, the Amadwee Party, whether we go back to the India Against Corruption movement and it's morphing into a party, sometimes it appears to be its own enemy. I mean, you described the parting of ways with Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav. As you said, it was like watching your parents getting divorced. Is there no possibility of Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav? I think a lot of water has flown under the bridge since that incident has taken place. And I think that sometimes, for example, if you look at Mr. Prashant Bhushan, I think that there is a lot of respect that all of us in Amadwee Party still have for him. I think that there is, he is still a crusader. There is no doubt about that. And there are so many battles that he is fighting, especially in the court of law, that I think he is contributing to bringing about change in this country. I think that maybe everyone is not meant to be together. Okay. That was, I don't know what, diplomatic or a good politician in you speaking. Well, we take a break over here, Atishi. And we conclude this segment of our discussion. And I'll continue with you, and I'll record another section which we will show, which will talk about the education system. Just heard and watched Atishi Marlena of the Amadwee Party talking about the current political situation. In the next part of this interview, we will discuss education in Delhi. Thank you for being with us.