Odd Even Part 2 has begun in Delhi. As was the case last time, there are mixed reports even now. While reports on 17th April said that pollution was up during the Odd-Even scheme, Delhi CM Kejriwal was busy retweeting tweets claiming odd even had improved air quality, although the reports within the tweets did not say so. The rest of the time was spent discussing how traffic had reduced considerably, on the first few days of Odd-Even, which also happened to be public holidays.
Moving away from Odd-Even for a bit, the Delhi CM has recently been attacked by miscreants. In January this year, when Kejriwal was hosting a “thanks-giving” rally for the first phase of Odd-Even, he had to face an “ink-attack”. Bhavna Arora, who is said to be the Punjab in-charge of Aam Aadmi Sena, a dissident faction of former workers of Aam Aadmi Party, threw ink on Arvind Kejriwal as he was delivering his speech.
More recently, in April 2016, a man who was identified as Ved Prakash, belonging again to the Aam Aadmi Sena, hurled a shoe at Kejriwal when he was addressing a press conference on the second odd-even plan in the city.
Two attacks by Aam Aadmi Sena members on Kejriwal just after and before the Odd-Even scheme. The discussions around these attacks were limited to the usual angles such as: “Aam Aadmi Sena is backed by BJP”, “Such use of violence should be condemned” and some even claiming that it might be a publicity stunt by Kejriwal.
One important common point of both the attacks which was glossed over by most was the fact that both the attackers claimed to have a CD which pointed to an alleged CNG scam. Ved Prakash claimed that the CD contained a sting operation, which exposes alleged sale of fake CNG stickers in Delhi ahead of the Odd-Even vehicular scheme. Bhavna Arora too made similar allegations against AAP government over the sale of more than 1 lakh CNG stickers to non-CNG cars. She also said she will present the proof to court, but we haven’t heard anything about this angle from the media yet.
Until now, these were just allegations, which could well have been politically motivated. But today, Journalist Rahul Kanwal tweeted an interesting observation:
Complete con job. Every other car at ITO has a CNG sticker. When I ask if the driver can open the boot – he freaks. Aise koi fayda nahi!
— Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) April 18, 2016
What @ArvindKejriwal & @DelhiPolice should do is start checking how many cars with CNG stickers actually have CNG kits installed in them.
— Rahul Kanwal (@rahulkanwal) April 18, 2016
So in January and early April, 2 people attack Arvind Kejriwal alleging a scam that CNG stickers have been sold to non-CNG vehicles, and as Odd-Even part 2 begins, a journalist makes observations which point in the same direction.
At this stage it is extremely early to conclude whether indeed such a scam has taken place. No evidence has been placed on record. But circumstantial data demands that the media should at least pursue this matter so that at least an enquiry is set up to arrive at a conclusion. Since Rahul Kanwal has sort of discovered the anomaly, and his channel India Today, (which also has AAP sympathiser Rajdeep Sardesai), has the resources to investigate this matter, one would ordinarily hope that India Today would follow up on this issue.
