Age of immoral politics while electoral bonds, Arvind Kejriwal shine
ED at Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal's residence (Image credit @AAPdelhi)
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, March 22: Enforcement Directorate arrested Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal while less than one month is left for the people to cast their votes in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections. His arrest pushed the revelations of the electoral bonds coming out as windfall for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out of the space from where the maximum sunshine could be seen.
There is jubilation in the ranks of the BJP over the arrest of Kejriwal. The party workers last night burst firecrackers. Kejriwal was politically unstoppable for the Delhi unit of the BJP. His Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) last year had wrested power even in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). Kejriwal along with top echelons of his party has been taken out of the electoral ring just before the Lok Sabha elections.
Top leadership of the Congress came before the media yesterday to claim that the party has almost been made incapable to contest the Lok Sabha elections because the bank accounts are frozen. The Income Tax Department as per the party treasurer Ajay Maken slapped notices for assessment year 1993-94 to make the bank accounts inoperative. Former president of the Congress Rahul Gandhi said that the party cannot buy even rail tickets. Mallikarjuna Kharge, the Congress president, said that the BJP is able to send half a dozen chartered planes and choppers for a single public meeting while his party is not even able to book an advertisement slot. Gandhi said that Indian democracy is now frozen, and the institutions are mute spectators.
Kejriwal has not resigned as chief minister of the national capital. He may earn the rare achievement of being a serving chief minister while in custody. His erstwhile peer Hemant Soren from Jharkhand had bowed before the political morality by resigning from the post of the chief minister. Soren had followed in the footsteps of former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav. While being at the top of popularity with grip on firm majority, Yadav had quit after he was first arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the fodder scam. Kejriwal, however, has the template of Satyender Jain, his former ministerial colleague, to follow who had resigned after almost 18 months since his arrest. The files were taken by the Delhi officials to Tihar Jail.
Delhi Minister Atishi has said that Kejriwal will serve the people from jail also as the chief minister. There are early signs of Delhi once more falling for anarchy. The officials may refuse to go to meet the chief minister in jail.
Kejriwal has been arrested on his possible linkage to the Delhi Excise scam which in the words of the Congress leader Ajay Maken involved the CM speaking to kingpins over facetime (I-Phone) to formalise a kickback of Rs 100 crores which were spent in the Goa Assembly elections in 2022. The kickback, according to Maken, who quoted the findings of the Enforcement Directorate, was for political purposes as the AAP set out to expand out of the national capital.
A section of the news portals established the linkage of the electoral bond windfalls for the BJP from the entities who had faced the probes of the ED or the CBI while some of the pharmaceutical firms were facing heat for spurious drugs. The BJP is the biggest beneficiary of the electoral bonds followed by the All Indian Trinamool Congress, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, and others. Details of the buyers of the electoral bonds are being used by the petitioners in the Supreme Court that the scheme was nothing but an indirect bribery.
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