Opinion Express View | Excess Bagga-ge: Everyone cuts a sorry figure in the arrest drama of Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga

The pull-and-push on Friday over the arrest of Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga by the hyper-zealous police forces of three states, apparently acting at the behest of two dueling ruling parties, was a deeply unedifying spectacle. Of course, the violations of the rules of the game that it showcases are not startlingly new. The (mis)use of the police by the party in power, the weaponisation of the penal code to target a political opponent, or the crossing of state boundaries and federal norms in the course of vendetta campaigns, have been seen before. They are, unfortunately, stale news. And yet, no matter which version of Friday’s sequence of events you choose to run with, the arrest of Bagga in Delhi in the morning hours, over comments he made against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, by a police team that swooped in from AAP-ruled Punjab, followed by their attempt to spirit him away to Mohali in AAP-land, foiled en route by Haryana Police acting in tandem with Delhi Police, both reporting to BJP governments, points to a hijacking of due process that is vividly flagrant and a cause for serious concern.

At the core of the drama lies freedom of speech, or rather its unfreedom. On this count, the BJP’s playing of the victim card is a little too rich — BJP-ruled governments have rightly earned themselves a formidable reputation for prickliness and vengefulness. Be it the arrest of Disha Ravi for dissemination of a toolkit during the farm protests or of Jignesh Mevani most recently for a tweet against the PM, instances of BJP governments setting the police on their critics and political opponents are growing. But if that is the irony, the tragedy is that, increasingly, the BJP’s Opposition is playing by the BJP’s book. Bagga isn’t exactly the paragon of political civility. Fom assaulting lawyer Prashant Bhushan in 2011 to vandalising his nameplate in 2017, only the terribly foolhardy would venture to defend his well-known incivilities. This time, his tweets against Kejriwal may be crude and offensive but the response of the AAP government to criticism of its leader is so disproportionate that it draws the spotlight squarely back on the party’s own display of intolerance and flouting of federal restraints. It is not just its unabashed use of the police in the state it rules, it is also the disregard, in the process, of established norms that govern inter-state action by the police that is striking in the Bagga episode.

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Last month, the newly elected AAP government in Punjab sent the Punjab Police to the doorsteps of at least three other critics of Kejriwal — former AAP leader Kumar Vishwas, Congress leader (also formerly AAP) Alka Lamba, and Delhi BJP’s Naveen Jindal. It’s as if newcomer AAP seems to be in a hurry to prove that it can outdo the dominant player at its own dismal game. That, if it doesn’t have the Delhi Police, it can play political master with the Punjab Police. In doing so, however, it is surrendering precious possibilities and shrinking spaces for a political alternative — the role it fancies itself playing. The AAP is in power in more than one state now, it needs to grow a thicker skin and recognise that its me-too politics has a larger cost.