Why Isn’t AAP’s Fraud Making News?

An allegation surfaced against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) recently and the media, favourably disposed to this party for reasons known best to it, dumped it! The alleged fraud found no mention on prime-time television and the newspapers relegated it to the inside pages in the form of snippets that would obviously not create an impact.

Since his resignation from the AAP, activist Neil Terrence Haslam has been targeting his former party with charges of corruption. In the run-up to the Delhi Assembly election, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made a song and dance about the Rs 2 crore worth of donation (in four stashes of Rs 50,00,000 each) to the AAP from fictitious sources, they were basing their allegation on Haslam’s findings. The AAP had tried to brush aside the accusation saying he was playing to the tunes of the BJP, but no incontrovertible evidence to link him with the BJP has surfaced so far.

In fact, in a recent communiqué to me, Haslam wrote that he was investigating the funding of all parties including the BJP.

Haslam has also lent credence to quite a few articles Swarajya has published, exposing the sinister foreign hand behind the AAP’s rise. He then held a press conference on 18 December 2015 to bring to public knowledge what he calls a “Rs 14 crore fraud, with fake pan cards, multiple shell companies”.

None of these exposés made big news. About two weeks ago, he supplied evidence that showed four of the AAP’s candidates for the Delhi election, who went on to be elected as MLAs, had furnished fake PAN numbers to the Election Commission of Delhi. Once again, the report did not create a flash. So, we reproduce the evidence.

Haslam says,

• AAP MLA from Seelampur Mohd Ishraque’s PAN AGSPR3269R is fake
  
• AAP Cabinet Minister Kapil Mishra (MLA from Karawal Nagar) had first said in an affidavit that the PAN ASIPM3751E belonged to his wife Preety Mishra; he then claimed that to be his own PAN
  
• The PAN of the wife of AAP MLA from Gokalpur Fateh Singh — BHAMPK1859 — is fake, too; furthermore, the 2.5 kg of gold and 5 kg of silver that he had said belonged to his wife through a 2008 affidavit disappeared in the details of his family assets as declared in the 2015 affidavit
  
• AAP MLA from Rajinder Nagar Vijender Garg submitted a fake PAN for his spouse Shashi Garg: ADRPG0020F
  

This is over and above the evidence that shows AAP MLA from Karol Bagh–Central Vishesh Ravi had sworn in his affidavit dated 2013 that his highest qualification was a BCom from the Choudhary Charan Singh University, which he had obtained in 2008. Two years later, however, when Delhi went to the polls again, Ravi’s university changed to IGNOU, from where he is yet to finish his BA! Moreover, his high and intermediate schools, as stated in the affidavit of 2013 — National Institute of Open Schooling and Uttar Pradesh Board—vanish from the affidavit dated 2015.

Given that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his party have made a mark with a self-certification drive that claimed that the AAP was the only honest alternative in Indian politics, such revelations are extremely newsworthy. They are also creditworthy because the person who has made these allegations has taken recourse to law by filing FIRs against the aforementioned accused and approaching the Prime Minister’s Office, the Finance Ministry, the Central Board of Direct Taxes, the CBI, the Election Commission and the Delhi Police Commissioner’s Office with these complaints.

The ball is as much in the media’s court as it is in the judiciary’s. News anchors must explain why they are not howling in protest at their 9 pm shows; news editors must explain why this is not making front-page news.