Q: Let's start with the state of ‘inner democracy' in your ‘Aam Aadmi Party'. There is not enough information available on the ‘decision making body' of your party. How do you select your candidates? Who takes the final decision?
Kejriwal: See, we have a national council that consists of 400 members. Then we have a national executive, political affairs committee and candidate screening committee. We have the same structure in states. National council takes all big decisions and it normally meets twice a year. As far as candidate selection is concerned, for the first time in India, there is a democratic process of screening candidates. As on today ,the process is that if you want ticket from Congress or BJP, you have to pay Rs 2 crore. There is no transparency in allocating tickets in these parties. In our party, anybody who wants to contest elections can download the form from our website and submit it after dully filling the form. Suppose we have 20 candidates applying from one constituency, now the screening committee examines all applications. First of all they see if there is any corruption charge or criminal case against these candidates, whether their public image is good or not. The screening committee shortlists a maximum of 5 candidates and their names are published on website. Common people are invited to submit their feedback on these candidates to make sure that all possible information is obtained. If the public feedback is not good for a candidate then his candidature is rejected. The candidature of remaining candidates is discussed with active volunteers and members and voting is done. The results of voting and the investigation report on these candidates are taken to political affairs committee which takes the final decision. This is more like 'primaries' of USA.
Q: Is it correct that the first question that you ask to a probable candidate is that – have you read ‘Swaraj'? Is it not like Gandhi asking his workers whether they have read his ‘My experiments with truth'? Your critics say that this is an attempt to maximize the sale of ‘Swaraj' and start a ‘personality cult' in the party.
Kejriwal: Yes, we do ask this question. But what is wrong in asking this? Should I ask them whether they have read any romantic book? We do this to check whether they are aware of our political vision. As for Gandhi, if he asked about ‘My experiments with truth' that would have been wrong, because that book was his autobiography. But if Gandhi asked about “Hind Swaraj' that would have been perfectly correct because that book reflected his ideology. And you should know that 2 lakh copies of ‘Swaraj' were already sold before these 600 candidates applied for ticket. So there is no connection between the two issues.
