Top leaders of India’s opposition coalition and thousands of supporters rallied on Sunday, March 31, 2024, to protest against the arrest of Delhi’s Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal weeks before a national election.
Kejriwal- a staunch critic of Modi, an anti-corruption crusader and a high-profile leader of the INDIA opposition alliance, was arrested on March 21, 2024, for alleged graft over granting liquor licences, less than a month before voting starts in a general election widely expected to solidify Modi’s mandate with a rare third term.
A court extended Kejriwal’s custody until April 1,2024. Kejriwal, 55, has denied the charges.
Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi party says the case against him is fabricated and politically motivated.
Modi’s government and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) deny political interference and say law enforcement agencies are doing their job.
India’s main financial investigation agency, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which arrested Kejriwal, has launched probes into at least four other state Chief Ministers or their family members.
Almost all the investigations involve political opponents of Modi’s BJP. In January, Hemant Soren, Chief Minister of the eastern state of Jharkhand, was arrested over corruption charges.
Critics say Modi and his party have weaponised investigative agencies and tax authorities to cull political opponents and reduce the chances of a fair election, an accusation the BJP denies.
Several leaders of the two dozen political parties of the opposition alliance – the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) – addressed the rally on Sunday.
“Narendra Modi is trying match-fixing in this election,” the leader of the opposition Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, told the rally in New Delhi.
“If the BJP wins this match-fixing election and changes the constitution, it will light the country on fire. This is not an ordinary election. This election is to save the country, protect our constitution.”
Rahul Gandhi
Sunita Kejriwal, the wife of Kejriwal, told the rally, “This fascism will not work in India. We will fight and we will win.”
“The people of India stand with Arvind Kejriwal. He can’t be kept in jail forever,” she added in her speech.
“The country is headed towards autocracy,” Shiv Sena party leader, Uddhav Thackeray, a former Chief Minister of Maharashtra state, told the flag-waving crowd, with many holding up posters showing Kejriwal behind bars as a large numbers of police officers watching.
“This one-man government is taking the country to ruin,” Thackeray added.
D Raja, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, in his address condemned Kejriwal’s arrest.
“Mr Modi, you cannot take the people of India for granted,” he said.
He claimed, “The government is using the Enforcement Directorate, income tax, and all central agencies to target the opposition parties.”
Modi Asserts Fight Against Corruption
Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi asserted that his fight against corruption had rattled the opposition.
He stated that the upcoming election was a fight between his party and its allies, who want to remove the corrupt, and an opposition that wants to protect the corrupt.
“Big corrupt people are behind bars and even the supreme court is not giving them bail,” Modi said in a rally to launch his election campaign in the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Sunday.
Nearly a billion Indians will vote to elect a new government in a six-week-long parliamentary election starting on April 19, 2024.
The six-phase vote will end on June 1, 2024, and the ballots will be counted on June 4, 2024.
Many analysts see Modi’s re-election as a foregone conclusion, partly due to the resonance of his assertive Hindu nationalist politics with members of the country’s majority faith.
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