The Union government headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) through its agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the CBI is staging a coup against the constitutional scheme of India.
With the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi and the main leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the BJP government has once again made it very clear that it would not allow any major political leader or party to remain in a position to campaign for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Before Kejriwal, the chief minister of Jharkhand, Hemant Soren, was arrested in another ‘corruption’ case.
Kejriwal’s arrest was imminent. The ED had been issuing summons to him and the courts refused to restrain the agency. Even the Supreme Court, which had burnt the midnight oil to save Arnab Goswami’s liberty, asked Kejriwal’s lawyers not to disturb its sleep and come the next morning. Meanwhile, he was arrested.
We are supposed to believe that all this is part of due process in investigating the alleged crime of changing Delhi’s liquor policy for monetary gains.
Three leaders of the AAP have already been arrested and are in jail. Another leader of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi from Telangana is also in jail.
After the arrests of people like Anand Teltumbde, father Stan Swamy, Hany Babu, Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, jurists have been asking again and again as to why the government needs to arrest people and keep them in jail only because it needs them for investigation?
It can always ask them to join the investigation. Persons like them, or Kejriwal or Soren, are not fleeing out of the country. Why do agencies want them to be in jail?
But in India and especially under the BJP government, investigation is used as a ruse to punish the critics and opponents of the government by jailing them. This is exactly what was done to P. Chidambaram and many others.
Recently, we heard the agencies informing the court that it did not need Shoma Sen’s custody for investigation. She is in jail for more than five years in the Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case.
It is mind boggling that the agency can, after putting a person in jail for five years, tell the court with a straight face that her custody is not required! And there is no uproar in society!
Perhaps it is this understanding of the popular mind that encourages the BJP to go on perpetrating more and more atrocities against its critics and opposition leaders.
The Indian masses do not care for their liberty. They still think that the government owns them and can do anything it wants with them.
Hours before Kejriwal’s arrest, the leaders of the Congress party issued statements that all of the party’s bank accounts had been frozen and the party was left with no money to do even its basic organisational work.
It was also reported that income tax officials went from bank to bank and arm twisted them to transfer money from the party’s accounts to the government.
This is an extraordinary step. We have not heard that banks, without even informing their clients, would allow their money to be transferred to another account. It is as if the government is telling us that it owns everything we have. The government here is behaving like an extortionist. It can seize your account, it can take away money from it and it can arrest you when it wants.
We are turning into mere properties of the government and do not realise what it is that we are losing.
Democracy runs on the principles of bipartisanship and the autonomy of institutions. It means the existence of an opposition and the acceptance by the government of the legitimacy of its voice and views.
But what we see is a BJP government which wants a political field empty of the opposition and to be the only player.
We saw it being done in the parliament’s winter session, in which nearly all of the opposition was forced out. We saw the farcical proceedings of the cancellation of Mahua Moitra’s parliamentary membership. Then we saw the blatant change in the policy of the selection of election commissioners. This is just before elections. And we saw the Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene.
If we think that this is a football match or some kind of wrestling between the opposition and the government, we are mistaken. The opposition also represents the people. An election victory does not allow the ruling party to disable the opposition by using the coercive instruments of the state.
One knows that the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal or Hemant Soren is to scare political leaders and the people and stun them into inaction. It is also to stifle their voice when it is needed the most.
Freezing the bank accounts of a party means freezing all of its movements. It cannot print a leaflet, its leaders cannot travel and its offices cannot function. But is it harming them? They function for us!
It would be good to hear what Salman Soz, a Congress leader, said after the Congress’s bank accounts were frozen:
“If you think it is just the problem of the Congress Party that its accounts have been emptied out by the BJP government, then you don’t understand how economies function.
This will have a snowball effect with businesses and individuals feeling insecure (remember the retrospective tax?). If the government can do it with the main opposition party, one which has the support of millions of people, imagine what the government can do to an individual company or taxpayer.
Now, you may say that I have done nothing wrong and why will the government come after my business or my family’s finances. But that is not how this works. Once this tiger tastes blood, its lust only grows. It looks for blood everywhere.
We have already seen how electoral bonds were purchased by companies that were also raided by agencies. This will not remain confined to such companies but will keep spreading and I don’t think anyone will remain immune from a feeling of insecurity.
In the end, we will live at the mercy of those wielding power. Even when we have done nothing wrong, and most people just want to live their lives peacefully, we will have to live according to the dictates of the Hafta Vasooli gang.”
Is this how we want to live? Are we actors in this theatre of democracy or mere spectators? Have we turned into such imbeciles who get overawed by these strong-arm and clearly criminal acts of the party in power and clap?
Will Kejriwal’s arrest force the people to come out of their slumber? Will the streets wake up? For this is the moment for the people to rise and save the opposition. For its own sake.
