Arvind Kejriwal is the shoot-and-scoot politician who first stokes a controversy and then moves on with another and yet another without taking any of the issues triggered by him to their logical conclusions. This has been his USP in the past couple of years which has made him what he is today: The most talked about, written about and photographed Indian politician who has been dominating all forms of media like no one else has done since 2011.

Ironically, the media that deified him has now started demonizing him as his shoot-and-scoot strategy has been thoroughly exposed.

What happened on Friday would have embarrassed any Indian politician and would have brought about an unconditional apology for his misjudgment and misdemeanor. The leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) gladly took a free ride along with his cronies on a chartered plane from Jaipur to Delhi to reach a meeting venue on time, a journey he could have covered in less than five hours by road.

Unsurprisingly, it became the top news for all Indian TV channels throughout Friday evening and channels ran panel discussions deriding the former Delhi chief minister for preaching to others what he himself does not practice. Kejriwal, often described by his political detractors as “Crazy Wall” to lampoon him with a pun on phonetic similarity, has been going hammer and tongs against the Gandhis and Narendra Modi for using private planes and helicopters.

But there was not a word of apology from Kejriwal. Instead he justified his free ride in a luxury private jet by remarking thus: “As other plane was not available, I took the chartered plane. India Today group has invited me. They bore the cost of the chartered plane.”

This is his favorite tactic. He remains inflexible and even sickeningly rigid even when he and his party are completely isolated on an issue. The unpardonable acts of Somnath Bharti, the lawless Law Minister during Kejriwal’s 49-day tenure as Delhi chief minister, are a glaring example of this rigidity. Bharti made African women urinate on the roadside during his midnight raid in South Delhi to forcibly collect their urine samples to “prove” that they were involved in a drugs-and-sex racket.

There was no apology from Kejriwal and he stoutly defended his minister’s conduct even though it did a great deal of harm to India’s diplomatic relations with Africa. When the laboratory tests of the forcibly collected urine samples turned out to be negative, no words of regret came from Kejriwal or AAP. Instead he moved on to newer controversies, true to his shoot-and-scoot strategy.

Before he triggered derision from the media and political parties for his Jaipur-Delhi journey in a chartered luxury plane, Kejriwal was in Gujarat for four days where he took the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi head on. He landed up at Modi’s office unannounced, with a battery of TV cameras in tow, and demanded a meeting. He was curtly told that one needs a prior appointment before meeting the chief minister. He ended his Gujarat tour by releasing a 16-point charge sheet against Modi, which the BJP has chosen to ignore.

Kejriwal’s shenanigans in Gujarat caused a flood of derisive and satirical remarks on Twitter. Sample one such acerbic tweet from the best-selling Indian author Chetan Bhagat: “I’m going to land up unannounced at US Prez Obama’s office with 30 media cameras. If he doesn’t meet, he’s obviously corrupt and scared of me.”

During his tour of Gujarat he was briefly detained by the police, infuriating AAP activists who took to the streets in three states in protest.

The recent AAP-BJP showdown and the accompanying violence have come as a godsend to the Congress. Through his media-fueled street power and maverick ways Kejriwal has successfully scripted a new political reality of India: That AAP would be the third pole of political discourse in two-party states like Gujarat and Rajasthan (where the BJP is in power) and that it is AAP rather than the Congress that has emerged as a feared enemy of the BJP.

It remains to be seen whether Kejriwal’s introduction of guerrilla warfare tactics in Indian polity would translate into votes in the April-May general elections. Kejriwal’s attacks on Modi during his Gujarat tour may or may not have unnerved the BJP but has definitely left the Congress leaders grinning from ear to ear. It has also lent a bit of credibility to the BJP’s allegation that AAP is nothing but a “B Team” of the Congress.

Kejriwal is increasingly being attacked by politicians and the media who have been anointing him with uncharitable epithets like “the Taleban of Indian politics” or “Item Girl,” the latter a description of Kejriwal by Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray. But he is undeterred. Going by his past track record, he will inevitably dominate the media in the coming months as he moves from one controversy to another. Indian general elections are so much fun!

• The writer is a New Delhi-based columnist who tweets @Kishkindha.