ABP News, one of the leading 24-hours Hindi news channels of India, created a sensation earlier today when they claimed that the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will be the Chief Ministerial candidate of the Aam Aadmi Party in the upcoming Punjab assembly elections.
ABP News claimed that this announcement was made by senior AAP leader and Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia:
Flash – @ArvindKejriwal to be CM candidate for #Punjabpolls: Delhi Deputy CM @msisodia https://t.co/diwoQM3GH1 pic.twitter.com/SxIH4EBNrl
— ABP News (@abpnewstv) January 10, 2017
The alleged announcement was in direct conflict with the declaration of Arvind Kejriwal, who had vowed to serve Delhi for full five years if he won Delhi assembly elections in 2015, which was swept by AAP in an unprecedented manner.
“Paanch saal Kejriwal” i.e. ‘Kejriwal for full term of five years’ was the popular slogan AAP had used during Delhi elections, so this announcement was totally opposite to what the party had promised.
Not only that, only last week Kejriwal had announced that AAP will not project anyone as the CM candidate in Punjab.
So was it another U-turn by Kejriwal or was it a case of media twisting statements?
If one listens to what Manish Sisodia says, it appears a case of media twisting his statement.
First listen yourself what he exactly said (in Hindi) while addressing a public rally in Mohali earlier today:
Basically Sisodia is asking the voters to vote “as if” Arvind Kejriwal will be the Chief Minister of Punjab. The statement is nowhere near to declaring Arvind Kejriwal as the official candidate for the post of Chief Minister of Punjab.
“Vote as if you are going to make Arvind Kejriwal the Chief Minister of state” is what Manish Sisodia said, which is very different from “Arvind Kejriwal will be the CM candidate in Punjab” that was reported by the ABP News.
This is similar to Narendra Modi explaining that the amount of black money abroad was so huge that if distributed among the poor people of India, everyone will get 15 lakhs rupees as their share. He explained “as if” the black money was being distributed (see the video of that speech by clicking here).
However, the leaders of AAP have always twisted this statement of Narendra Modi to claim that Modi had promised to pay every Indian citizen 15 lakh rupees in their bank accounts. Now it appears that the karma is catching up with AAP with ABP News twisting Manish Sisodia’s statement.
However, one crucial difference is that while BJP has always maintained that PM Modi’s statement was only to explain the magnitude of black money, Manish Sisodia didn’t categorically deny Arvind Kejriwal being the Chief Minister of Punjab when ABP News asked for a clarification.
Sisodia said that the CM will be decided by the MLAs later, which has allowed the news channel to continue to claim that there was a possibility that Arvind Kejriwal could become the Chief Minister of Punjab if AAP wins the elections.
However, that doesn’t mean that Arvind Kejriwal has been declared as the CM candidate by AAP, which ABP News claimed.
