(Free) Power Doesn’t Grow Out of a Mug

We seek qualities in our political representatives that include the ability to listen, act upon popular demands, the ability to administer and… yada yada. If our political choices were like beauty pageants where we were asked, ‘What qualities would you like in a politician?’ these clichés would have, indeed, sufficed. But it turns out that honesty does, on occasions, raise its pretty head, as it did when Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Raghav Chadha received an endorsement on social media from an unusually frank perspective. When a Twitter user urged people to vote to bring AAP to power in Punjab so as to get free electricity, one candid respondent replied that she wants ‘Raghav, not electricity’. Good sport Chadha responded, ‘I’m not on the manifesto, but free electricity is.’ Literally more power to you, he was telling his admirer, a Kirti Thakur.

The 32-year-old MLA representing Rajinder Nagar may have to come to terms with his charms. But could Thakur’s preference for the AAP leader also be a coded message that having the promise of free power in a party manifesto doesn’t behove the vice-chairman of the Delhi Jal Board, especially in a state with a fast-depleting water table? No matter how pleasant his features are to some of the electorate, this could be a call-out. While being a flirtatious call-in as well.