#KejriwalExposed again, now on PM's residence allegations

The cost comparison of the Delhi CM’s & India’s PM’s houses is ridiculous for lots of reasons. The foremost role of the PMH is to act as a nuclear command bunker. This role entails not just making a deep-set command center under the house but also ingress & egress routes in severely irradiated conditions. Moreover, the command & control bunker will have to be extraordinarily sophisticated in order to stay functional despite electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to the tune of several thousands of megajoules during a nuclear event. What’s more, it’ll act as a command post which means housing several staff and possibly hundreds during wartime. This is a security expense, not an ornamental expense. 

 

 

 

Check the White House - it’s small yes, but the executive office building is where all the work happens & where the command post functions are carried out in case of any nuclear incident eventuating. This is not a joke. Every single serious nuclear power - China’s Zhongnanhai, Russia’s Kremlin & France’s Elysé Palace has similar (exorbitant) measures in place. Furthermore, the house also needs to be espionage-proof - rooms for all effects and purposes will have to be Faraday cages & windows will have to not just be blast and bulletproof - but triple-glazed with a thin metal gauze to act as Faraday cages. Further, one new method (which I doubt will be introduced) is light diffusion disruption because Western intelligence can figure out conversations just by pointing a laser and figuring out what is Saud based on how the light reacts. You can read more about this new method in Ronen Bergman’s fabulous Haaretz Pieces, where the Obama administration got a US naval officer stationed in a flat overlooking Netanyahu’s residence to use this method to overcome the effective soundproofing the Israelis had done. Security is no joke - and right now the counter-espionage measures at 7RCR are a big joke. Now let’s talk ornamental. This is a house

where Heads of state will be entertained. Kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers & princes will be hosted here.

 

 

 

In spite of that, the ornamentation of Indian prime ministerial residences is not just Spartan - but incredibly low class & tacky - furnished by F grade Interior designers brought in on the lowest quote L1 system and substandard furniture provided by CPWD. Take a look at these pics. My dog beds & cat house are more “designer” than that tacky “art”, the cheap airport lounge carpet & the atrocious woodwork of the table & chairs. Similarly, everything in this photo from the residential meeting room is cringe-inducingly low quality. You can literally get better stuff at Panchkuian Market off the roadside. Clearly, the PM (like his predecessors at 7RCR) has zero interest in luxuries. Safe to say the overwhelming majority of the 400 crores will be going towards the security features & the PM will be sticking to cheap art & furniture provided by the Central Public Works Department. Now contrast this with the 45 crores spent on Kejriwal’s house. No nuclear, counter-espionage, Or security functions accrue to a powerless CM who doesn’t even control the police force. Save for personal security, the Delhi CM has zero national security implications being nowhere in the intelligence briefing chain or the delegated nuclear command chain. The ENTIRE 45 cr Is an ornamental expenditure.

Sample this

₹11.3 crore on interior decorations; ₹6 crore on marble

₹1 crore on design consultancy

₹ 5.43 crore on electrical, automatic smart lighting, and firefighting systems

₹1.1 crore on kitchen appliances incl a built-in barbecue

₹1 crore on wooden flooring.

₹ 45.5 lahks on curtains

₹ 5 crores on “artistic and ornamental work”.

 

 

 

Not one single expense here is national security related. Mind you Kejriwal could be very serious about the state of dilapidation - but CPWD is more than capable of renovations Indeed most houses of MPs and ministers are similarly 80 to 100 years old and the CPWD keeps the roof from falling down. Any MP who doesn’t like CPWD work is required to shell out money from their own pockets - or like a certain parasitic MP get their extra-marital sugar daddy to fund the repairs & maintenance and upgrades. Kejriwal did not do this. He spent public money. This of course is his right - he is the master of Delhi’s budget and he rightly points out that this will be public property handed over from CM to CM.

 

 

 

Yet he was the one criticizing the expenditure on the new PMH which was an infinitely more important, national security-related national asset, handed over from PM to PM. And that brings us to the core of the issue - not that Kejriwal was wrong in spending those 45 crores, but that he’s a hypocrite of the Worst possible kind. He criticizes public infrastructure assets while undertaking the same/similar projects, but unlike those national projects whose expenditure is overwhelmingly on national security & redundancy, his expenditure is entirely over the top ornamentation. He could have very easily called in public works to do deep maintenance of the current house for a few lakhs at best, yet he chose ostentation, which he claims to eschew. Ditto the rationale given by Raghav Chadda about the PM’s aircraft. It’s 2 planes - for redundancy - heavily modified to operate in a nuclear environment as a command post aircraft, with extremely sophisticated countermeasures to combat airborne threats and a communications system that can be operated in heavily jammed, post-EMP, irradiated environments. We are after all talking about the Prime Minister of nuclear power, not the glorified powerless mayor of a city masquerading as a chief minister. These comparisons between the CMH & OMH are not just facile but expose the cynical hypocrisy of Kejriwal & the illiteracy & civic cluelessness of his closest lieutenants.

 

Here’s what Kejriwal signed in 2013. I draw your attention to point 3 “मैं बड़ा बंगला नहीं लूँगा। आम आदमी की तरह सामान्य घर में रहूँगा” (trans: I will not take a big bungalow. I will live in an accommodation like the common man”. India’s average per capita income is 45 crores.