NEW DELHI LETTER
It is not good to be a political opponent in India. The misadventures of number two in the Delhi government are further proof of this. Manish Sisodia, 51, was arrested on February 26 by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), a government agency responsible for criminal investigations. The man was thrown in prison for an alleged scam over the policy of selling alcohol in the capital, enacted in 2021. In support of his arrest, investigators argued that the chosen one had provided “evasive answers” during interrogations.
The elected official, who denies any irregularity, resigned from all his functions. He held eighteen portfolios, including education, which made him popular. Under his leadership, Delhi invested heavily in the construction and renovation of public schools.
In a Delhi court on Saturday March 4, Manish Sisodia, who was asking for his release on bail, told the magistrates that the interrogations carried out by CBI agents lasted eight to ten hours a day. “I get asked the same questions from morning to night, all day long. To me, that’s mental harassment. » The court decided to extend his pre-trial detention.
Media arrests and spectacular searches
A former journalist, he became number two in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Ordinary Man’s Party, created in 2012 to fight corruption and led by Arvind Kejriwal, the head of government of Delhi, whose he is the lieutenant. This young formation conquered in 2015, the capital, New Delhi, 20 million inhabitants, crushing the two major traditional parties of right and left and inflicting on the Indian Prime Minister his first electoral setback. Five years later, in 2020, Narendra Modi, after a particularly aggressive campaign by representatives of his party, had hoped to retake the capital, but Arvind Kejriwal had easily won the votes of the inhabitants.
On the strength of his success, the latter decided to launch his party to conquer other Indian states, in an attempt to establish itself as a major component of the opposition to Mr. Modi and put an end to the bipolarization of Indian politics, dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the right and the Congress Party on the left. In March 2022, he succeeded, to everyone’s surprise, in winning the state of Punjab, by defeating the training of the prime minister.
Arvind Kejriwal suspects the BJP of wanting to sabotage the work of his government. “The alcohol scandal is an excuse, corruption is not the problem. The motive was to stop the good work of ministers”, he accused. In May 2022, it had already lost its health minister, Satyendar Jain, arrested for alleged money laundering. The chosen one has since been languishing in prison.
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