A Modi rival is arrested. Now, supporters of the opposition leader are protesting in India's capital

People shout slogans as they march in New Delhi, India.

By SHEIKH SAALIQ and KRUTIKA PATHI

March 22, 2024 9:28 AM PT

NEW DELHI — Supporters of an anti-corruption crusader and one of India’s most consequential politicians of the last decade held protests Friday against his arrest, which opposition parties say is part of a crackdown by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government before national elections.

Arvind Kejriwal, who is New Delhi’s top elected official, was arrested Thursday night by the federal Enforcement Directorate, which is controlled by Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. The agency accused Kejriwal’s party and ministers of accepting $12 million in bribes from liquor contractors nearly two years ago.

Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, or Common People’s Party, said the accusations were fabricated. The party said Kejriwal will remain New Delhi’s chief minister while it fights the accusations in court. Late Friday, a New Delhi court allowed the agency to take Kejriwal into custody for seven days.

In 2023, as part of the same case, the agency arrested Kejriwal’s deputy, Manish Sisodia, and AAP lawmaker Sanjay Singh.

In the lead-up to the general election, which starts April 19, India’s opposition parties accuse the government of misusing its power to harass and weaken its political opponents. They point to a spree of raids, arrests and corruption investigations against key opposition figures. Meanwhile, some probes against erstwhile opposition leaders who later defected to Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have been dropped.

“It looks like harassment because only opposition leaders are being singled out,” said political commentator Neerja Chowdhury, adding that there’s been no investigation against anyone in the BJP. “It’s not a level playing field.”

The BJP denies using law enforcement agencies to target the opposition and says the agencies act independently.

On Friday, hundreds of AAP supporters and some senior party leaders clashed with the police, who whisked some of them away in buses.

“This is dictatorship. All this is done to win the national polls,” said AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj, referring to the BJP.

Kejriwal’s AAP is part of a broad alliance of opposition parties called INDIA, the main challenger to Modi’s BJP in the elections to be held from April until June.

Kejriwal’s arrest is another setback for the bloc and came after the Congress party accused the government Thursday of crippling the party by freezing its bank accounts in a tax dispute. But it has also led to a rare show of strength by the opposition figures who slammed the move as undemocratic and accused Modi’s party of misusing the agency.

“A scared dictator wants to create a dead democracy,” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said about the arrest in a social media post on X.

“India is under an undeclared Emergency. Our democracy stands critically endangered today,” AAP lawmaker Raghav Chadha said on X.

Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said that Kejriwal’s party was playing the “victim card” and that the leader should resign from his chief minister post.

In January, the agency arrested Hemant Soren — who was, until then, the chief minister of eastern Jharkhand state — for allegedly facilitating an illegal land sale. Soren’s party denies the accusations.

Gandhi was convicted of criminal libel in 2023 after a complaint by a member of Modi’s party. A two-year prison sentence disqualified him from parliament for a time, until the verdict was suspended.

Kejriwal launched the AAP in 2012 and campaigned on a promise to rid the Indian political system of corruption and inefficiency. The party’s symbol — a broom — and its promise to sweep the administration of graft struck a chord with Delhi residents.

The party won the Delhi state legislature election a year later, when he became the chief minister — a feat he repeated in 2015 and 2020. Kejriwal’s party also governs northern Punjab state.

Modi has previously said his party is targeting 370 seats out of 543 in the upcoming national polls. To achieve that, experts say the BJP will have to repeat its electoral triumph in 2019, in which it won an overwhelming majority of the seats in northern India, including all seven seats in Delhi.

Chowdhury, the commentator, said Kejriwal is the star face of his party.

“He’s very politically savvy, and in Delhi, the AAP has goodwill — their tie-up with the Congress for the elections would have posed a challenge for the BJP to pull that off again.

“But the big question is: Will Kejriwal’s arrest galvanize voters? The investigations against opposition leaders so far has not had the kind of traction they may have expected,” Chowdhury said, “but now with this arrest, will public opinion start to turn?”

Saaliq and Pathi write for the Associated Press.