Opinion AAP’s Jasmine Shah writes on Manish Sisodia’s arrest: A dark day for democracy

This incident also signifies the coming of age of the new “buy-bend-punish” model in Indian politics that the BJP has engineered carefully over the past nine years. Under this model, BJP’s struggle and lust for power never really ends with a defeat in elections at the hands of an Opposition party. It only changes gears. It first unleashes Operation Lotus to “buy” out Opposition leaders and get them to switch over to the BJP in order to topple Opposition-led governments. Madhya Pradesh in 2020, Karnataka in 2019 and Goa in 2017 are among the several examples of such defections engineered after the BJP lost an election. A total of 211 lawmakers (MPs and MLAs) from Opposition parties are said to have joined BJP since 2014.

If that fails, the threat of launching fresh investigations or taking action under ongoing investigations by the trinity of the Centre’s top investigative agencies — CBI, ED and Income Tax (IT) — is imposed upon Opposition leaders to “bend” them into submission. The list of such leaders who have seen their investigations melt into thin air soon after they joined the BJP is endless. Mukul Roy, who is an accused in Narada scam, Suvendu Adhikari who is accused in the Saradha chit fund scam, Himanta Biswa Sarma who is accused in a bribery scam and Narayan Rane who was being probed by the ED for an alleged Rs 300 crore land scam, are but a few examples of prominent Opposition leaders who saw their investigations magically stalled after they joined the BJP. This has also earned the BJP the well-deserved moniker of a “washing machine” party.

But if that fails too, like in the case of Manish Sisodia, these Opposition leaders and their governments are “punished” by unleashing the full fury of the Centre’s investigative agencies upon them. Besides personal harassment, such orchestrated probes give BJP a long rope to tarnish the image of these leaders in the media besides stalling the work of opposition-led governments. Nothing is more telling of this trend than the data in the investigative reports of this very newspaper. Since 2014, 95 per cent of the 124 CBI cases against prominent leaders were targeted at Opposition parties, whereas this figure was 60 per cent under UPA rule. Similarly, 95 per cent of the 121 prominent politicians probed by the ED since 2014 were Opposition leaders, whereas this figure was 54 per cent under UPA rule.

BJP leaders often respond to these harsh truths by asking why fear if you have done nothing wrong. The recent arrest of Manish Sisodia exemplifies why every such instance of harassment of Opposition leaders needs to be questioned and vigorously pushed back by the entire society.

Ever since the CBI and ED launched their probes into Delhi’s excise policy a year ago at BJP’s behest, Sisodia cooperated with the investigation at every stage. His house and office were raided, his bank lockers were opened up and even his native village was visited by investigation officers to build a case for disproportionate assets. But no such case could be built. Yet, he was arrested on Sunday on the flimsy grounds of alleged non-cooperation. What will follow now is a long series of hearings for bail stretching into months, where the process itself becomes the punishment. The bizarre detention of Satyendar Jain, Delhi’s Health Minister, for the past nine months under an ED case, again without any substantive evidence or obtaining any conviction from a court of law, shows how BJP has mastered the process of abusing the law at every stage to harass its political opponents.

In this instance, the real loss will be that of the children of Delhi who no longer have the privilege of calling Sisodia their education minister. Here’s a person who has transformed the lives of 18 lakh children by turning around the state of Delhi’s government schools. Be it the building of 20,000 swanky new classrooms, introducing innovative happiness and entrepreneurship curricula or getting hundreds of government school students to crack the JEE and NEET exams, it was under his leadership that education became the central plank of Delhi’s governance model and a great social equaliser for Delhi’s masses. It was also under Sisodia that Delhi’s education model earned international acclaim, including a front-page profile in The New York Times and a visit of the former US First Lady Melania Trump to one of the happiness classes in a Delhi government school. His absence will also severely affect the work of 18 other departments of the Delhi government which he headed, all to the benefit of BJP — the principal opposition party in Delhi.

While the arrest of Sisodia by the CBI may have been well-orchestrated by the BJP, what they may not have expected is the widespread condemnation of this act by Opposition leaders and chief ministers across political lines. History tells us that there comes a time in every authoritarian regime, when the entire society unites in fighting back causing their ultimate downfall. The BJP’s brazen action against Manish Sisodia is the moment for the entire Opposition and the people of India to unite against an oppressive regime — not to save an individual but to save the future of Indian democracy.

Jasmine Shah is an AAP leader. Views expressed are personal