Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, March 5: Amid the political battle over the detention of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia, eight opposition parties have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging misuse of the government’s investigative institutions to target them.
The Congress has avoided the letter signed by opposition leaders including Chief Ministers K Chandrashekar Rao, Mamata Banerjee, Bhagwant Mann and Arvind Kejriwal, among others.
Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference, Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party, Uddav Thackeray of the Sena, Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, and Tejashwi Yadav, the deputy chief minister of Bihar, have also signed the letter.
The Gandhis are under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for alleged money laundering associated with Young Indian’s acquisition of Associated Journals Ltd, the organisation responsible for running the National Herald newspaper.
“We hope you would agree that India is still a democratic country. The blatant misuse of central agencies against the members of the opposition appears to suggest that we have transitioned from being a democracy to an autocracy,” the letter said.
“… After a long witch-hunt, Manish Sisodia was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with alleged irregularity without a shred of evidence against him,” it added.
The opposition leaders used Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma as an example. While he was a member of the Congress, Sarma was investigated by the CBI and the ED in 2014 and 2015 for his involvement in the Saradha chit fund fraud.
Sisodia was detained for allegedly engaging in corruption when drafting Delhi’s liquor policy. The BJP has refuted the AAP’s claim of political vendetta, claiming that even if he had been the Education Minister and had contributed to school improvement, he could not have used that as a cover for his corruption.
Over the years, the central agencies have insisted they do not detain anyone on spurious allegations and only release them if they are not found guilty following a thorough inquiry, regardless of
