'Politics of revenge': Why is India's Modi going after opposition leaders?

Arvind Kejriwal, one of India’s key opposition leaders and the chief minister of Delhi state, became the latest opposition leader to be imprisoned on corruption charges.

On Thursday, 55-year-old Kejriwal, who heads the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that also runs the government in north India’s Punjab state, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), India’s financial crime probe agency controlled by the federal government.

Kejriwal has been ruling Delhi since 2014 and is one of the fiercest critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The arrest comes less than a month before India’s 18th parliamentary general election is scheduled to start.

Though the opposition appears more organised than in the last polls in 2019, Modi remains highly popular and is widely tipped to win a third term.

Kejriwal has been charged with involvement in an alleged scam related to formulating Delhi’s liquor policy. He is the second chief minister of opposition-ruled states to be arrested in recent months.

In January, Hemant Soren, the chief minister of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand and head of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) party, was arrested on corruption charges. Leaders of several other opposition parties have also been arrested or had their houses raided or properties seized.

According to a tally by the Reuters news agency, the ED has summoned, questioned, or raided nearly 150 opposition politicians since Modi assumed office in 2014.

Kejriwal’s arrest comes at a time when seat-sharing adjustment between Kejriwal’s AAP and India’s main opposition party, the Congress, is expected to throw Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a formidable challenge in states like Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat.

AAP is part of India’s opposition block formed last year, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, popularly called the INDIA bloc.

Following his arrest, opposition parties took potshots at the Modi government, accusing it of using investigating agencies controlled by the federal government to silence opposition and critics.

“I vehemently condemn the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal, the sitting elected Chief Minister of Delhi elected by the people,” Mamata Banerjee, another key opposition leader and chief minister of the West Bengal state, wrote on a social media post while expressing her “unwavering support and solidarity” with Kejriwal and his family.

Several leaders of Banerjee’s party, including her parliamentarian nephew, Abhishek, are under investigation by federal agencies. Two ministers of Banerjee’s government are currently in jail.

'Politics of Revenge'

Congress general secretary and former federal minister Jairam Ramesh said that the country was in a state of “one-person dictatorship” and described the ED’s action as “politics of revenge”.

The arrest came close on the heels of the Congress alleging that the Income Tax (IT) department, another federal agency, has frozen all its bank accounts on charges of discrepancies in their tax papers.

Leaders of the BJP defended all these actions, with party spokespersons saying that people indulging in corruption will have to face consequences.

Opposition parties, however, have repeatedly highlighted that politicians facing federal agency investigations stop facing harassment the moment they join the BJP. They call it “washing machine politics”, in which one becomes clean after joining the BJP.

Constandine Ravindran, a spokesperson of the opposition party Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) that rules the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, says that the arrest reflects the Modi government’s fear of impending defeat.

“They are using all supposedly independent institutions to frame opposition politicians in false cases. Now, the more desperate they get, the more they will expose their panic of losing power,” Ravindran tells TRT World.

He says government data shows that over 90 percent of cases filed by federally controlled agencies like the ED, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and the Income Tax Department are against opposition leaders.

Notably, the Sweden-based global democracy watchdog V-Dem’s latest report described India as “one of the worst autocratisers” in the world.

Money matters

Kejriwal’s arrest comes amid a political churning in India, triggered by the Supreme Court of India striking down an opaque scheme that allowed anonymous political donations in the form of electoral bonds.

There were allegations that the scheme encouraged quid pro quo arrangements between the government and corporates.

Even in Kejriwal’s case, the firms owned by one of the accused – who later turned a government witness – had donated about $5 million to Modi’s party in recent months, both before and after his arrest, through the electoral bond scheme.

According to Ajay Gudavarthy, a political scientist at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University and author of the recent book, ‘Politics, Ethics and Emotions in ‘New India’’, the arrest reflects the BJP’s desperation to return to power for a third term.

“They know they are not on solid grounds. There is anti-incumbency to a certain level. Their seat tally in several large states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Bihar and West Bengal, and mid-sized states like Telangana, may drop. That’s why they are taking a risk by trying to leave the opposition leaderless just at the election hour,” Gudavarthy tells TRT World.

According to him, the BJP hopes that by reducing the independence of all democratic institutions and the capacities of opposition parties, they can leave the people with no other alternative but to negotiate only with the BJP.

He also feels that the government wants to keep Kejriwal out of the election campaign because he, unlike other opposition leaders who criticise the Modi rule from a secular perspective, can speak to the Hindu vote bank and dent the BJP’s vote share.

“However, it can also have a different impact. The possibility of public sympathy for Kejriwal cannot be ruled out. If people see this treatment of opposition leaders as a threat to the democratic system and a threat to themselves, things may go wrong for the BJP,” he adds.

He pointed out how India voted out Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1977 after she tried to rein in the independent, democratic institutions and stifle the opposition parties.