Free Water, Electricity not Freebies but ‘Constitutional Responsibilities of State’, AAP tells SC

While the political arena is already witnessing a war of words over freebies, the Aam Aadmi Party has knocked the doors of the Supreme Court by way of an intervention application. The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP through its intervention application filed before the top court in an ongoing matter has claimed that electoral promises such as free water, free electricity are not “freebies” but examples of discharging “constitutional responsibilities of the state” towards creating a more equitable society. “In fact, in numerous developed countries, particularly the Scandinavian nations, the socialist and welfarist model of development has allowed significant leaps in the nations’ performance across several markers of progress, including but not restricted to markers like the Gini Coefficient which represents economic inequality and human development index which seeks out an overall assessment of social, educational and health indicators of quality of life. The AAP through its plea also questioned the motive of Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay and stated that the petition filed by him is not a “public interest litigation” but “political interest litigation”. The Petition, while referring vaguely to freebies’, clearly seeks judicial action against a particular model of economic development by exclusively targeting fiscal expenditure on socialist and welfarist measures for the masses,” the plea said further.