Kejriwal Arrest: Rise Unitedly in Protest
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THE arrest and detention of Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of Delhi, by the Enforcement Directorate is a turning point in the steady erosion of democracy in India. This brazen assault on the democratic system is a first in many respects. It is the first time a sitting chief minister whose party commands more than four-fifth majority in the assembly has been arrested, for the first time the head of a national political party has been put behind bars. And this is the very first time that such an arrest has been affected after the announcement of the Lok Sabha election and the model code of conduct has come into force.
The ruling party is out to finish off the opposition using an array of instruments of the State. The central agencies are being used to target key opposition leaders. Prior to Kejriwal’s arrest, the chief minister of Jharkhand Hemant Soren was detained by the ED just after he resigned from the chief ministership. Earlier the deputy chief minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia was arrested and spent nearly a year in jail. There are scores of further opposition leaders and ministers in all non-BJP state governments who are either in jail or facing investigations by the central agencies. The central agencies have also been illegally used to threaten opposition leaders and legislators to engineer their defection to the BJP.
The notorious role of the ED has been exposed after the details of the electoral bond scheme were made public. In the liquor policy case in which Kejriwal has been implicated, the ED had arrested the managing director of a pharmaceutical company, Aurobindo Pharma, Sarath Chandra Reddy, whose company donated Rs 5 crore through electoral bond to the BJP, five days after his arrest in November 2022. Subsequently, he got bail and turned approver and four months later, Rs 25 crore was paid to the BJP through bonds. This shows how the cases against Kejriwal and AAP leaders have been manufactured.
Apart from coercive action by the ED and the CBI, opposition parties are facing attacks by the Income Tax department on their finances. The main opposition party, the Congress, has faced penal action and been taxed to the tune of Rs 135 crores for the financial year 2018-19. Its bank accounts were frozen before the IT department recovered this amount. Similar action is being taken against other parties too. For instance, the CPI(M) had its tax exemption withdrawn for the year 2016-17 and ordered to pay a tax of Rs 15.59 crore for the mere technical lapse of not listing one of the hundreds of bank accounts that the Party has all over the country. The CPI(M) went to the Delhi High Court against this unwarranted action and the matter is sub-judice at the moment.
After having choked off legal funding to the opposition parties through the electoral bond scheme and monopolising corporate donations through electoral trusts, the Modi government is now bent upon strangulating the opposition financially through punitive taxation measurers.
The Kejriwal arrest comes after the systematic onslaught on the powers of the elected government in Delhi. Just like the opposition parties, state governments run by the opposition are under attack through assaults on the federal principle.
It is in this context that the Kejriwal arrest must be seen as part of the existential threat to parliamentary democracy in India. There are no pretensions left, the veil is off. A tyrannical regime has established an electoral autocracy. The Election Commission is under the thumb of the executive and the higher judiciary is refusing to confront a rampaging government.
There is no other way but for the secular and democratic forces to go to the people and mobilise them against the threat to their democracy and citizens’ rights. The mass protests musts not be centered in Delhi alone, where a mass rally by the INDIA bloc is being organised on March 31, but must spread thoroughout the country. Kerala had shown the way where mass demonstrations and rallies have been held all across the state. It is essential that popular protests and mass campaigns take place. It is such public mobilisation that will certainly affect the BJP adversely in the elections.
(March 27, 2024)
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