A day after Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over his alleged involvement in the excise scam, political parties from the INDIA coalition met chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar and other senior officials and accused the Centre of misusing central agencies. They also asked the poll body to ensure a level-playing field in the upcoming general elections.
The coalition wanted the election commission (EC) to issue a circular that prevents further raids, investigations and arrests without first being vetted and approved by the poll body, and also to take immediate action against individuals and officers who misuse their offices to “harass” opposition leaders.
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“The entire nation is witness to the unrelenting, blatant and illegal deployment of central agencies by the party in power to target, suffocate and intimidate the opposition parties. Such unconscionable misuse of state machinery by a party in power is a direct threat to the sanctity of free and fair elections, as they completely erode the core of our democracy, namely free and fair elections,” read the memorandum submitted by the INDIA bloc.
Apart from Kejriwal’s arrest, the delegation raised concerns around the arrest of Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, and the freezing of Congress’s accounts. The coalition said that this obstructs the level-playing field for political parties.
The multi-party delegation included Congress’s Abhishek Singhvi, KC Venugopal and Gurdeep Singh Sappal, Aam Aadmi Party’s Sandeep Pathak and Pankaj Gupta, Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Sitaram Yechury, Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’Brien, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s P Wilson, and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar’s Jitendra Ahwad.
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“It is not a complaint about X, Y or Z. It is a larger issue of affecting, impairing, undermining and sabotaging the basic structure of the Indian Constitution. We pointed out that a level-playing field is the heart and soul of free and fair elections, and free and fair elections are the heart and soul of democracy itself,” Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said after the half-an-hour meeting with the poll body. And democracy has been upheld by the Supreme Court as an integral part of the basic structure, he added.
“You use and misuse agencies blatantly. Cases which are 20 years old [are taken up]. If you have to take action, and I am assuming for a minute that the action is justified, why can’t the action be deferred until June or July? What is the need to arrest him today? What is the need to raid him tomorrow? Right in the middle of the election? Because you want to win by other means before the first vote is cast,” Singhvi said.
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The delegation said that in 75 years of Indian history, no party has ever thought of arresting a sitting CM, he said.
“Every party standing across the political spectrum has been harassed, arrested and raided… Not a single person of the ruling party is affected,” Singhvi added.
The memo submitted by the parties included a list of 10 incidents where ED, income tax department, Central Bureau of Investigation and other central probe agencies either raided or arrested leaders from the opposition parties, or frozen their bank accounts between January 1 and March 21.
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