Tag: narendra modi

New Delhi, India – The arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by India’s financial crime investigation agency on Thursday night has triggered near-unanimous condemnation from the country’s fragile opposition, with some leaders warning of a people’s “revolution” against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Kejriwal’s arrest, weeks before the first round of India’s mammoth seven-phase national elections, comes on the heels of similar arrests of opposition leaders and raids on their properties by law enforcement agencies. India’s biggest opposition party, the Congress, said Thursday morning that it was unable to continue campaigning because all its bank accounts had been frozen in connection with an ongoing tax dispute.

The latest arrest also plunged India’s capital into an unprecedented constitutional crisis – it is the first time that Delhi’s serving chief minister has been arrested. Calling it “dirty politics” by Modi over a “bogus case”, a spokesperson for Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) told Al Jazeera that the party leader would not resign, and, rather, “run the government from jail”.

India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) has been investigating corruption allegations in a liquor policy implemented by Kejriwal’s government in 2022. The policy allegedly gave undue advantages to private retailers and has led to the arrests of ministers, officials and an executive of the Indian arm of French spirits giant Pernod Ricard.

Before the arrest, the agency had summoned 55-year-old Kejriwal nine times for questioning. The chief minister refused to appear before the authorities. Now, he joins almost the entire top leadership of his party – former deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia, and former ministers Satyendar Jain and Sanjay Singh – in prison, deepening challenges for the AAP, which runs two opposition-ruled states: Delhi and Punjab.

AAP has denied allegations of corruption, while the Modi government has rejected charges of any political vendetta.

“Whatever the PM fancies, he can do. So far, they have arrested two chief ministers, and it’s possible they can arrest more chief ministers,” Saurabh Bharadwaj, Delhi’s health minister and a close aide of Kejriwal, said in a statement to Al Jazeera.

Last month, the agency arrested Hemant Soren, hours after he resigned as the chief minister of Jharkhand state, on charges of corruption. Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, like the AAP and the Congress, is part of the INDIA opposition alliance that hopes to take on Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming elections, in which the prime minister aims to secure a third term in office.

However, some analysts suggest that the arrests could prove politically risky for Modi and the BJP, potentially galvanising sympathy for targeted leaders and coalescing an otherwise divided opposition into greater unity against the shared threat of a crackdown on all of them.

‘Common man’ to ‘martyr’?

Devender Singh, a 34-year-old AAP worker, joined hundreds of protesters who gathered near the chief minister’s residence in Delhi while the agency questioned Kejriwal on Thursday before his arrest. “This is unbecoming of the Indian democracy,” he told Al Jazeera. “[An elected CM] is being harassed and tortured in daylight, what has gotten into Modi’s mind?”

“First time, I voted for Kejriwal; next time, I was campaigning for him,” said Singh, amid a building police presence and slogans lamenting a “death of democracy”. He added: “It is a witch-hunt of opposition leaders by the government that is afraid of any alternatives.”

Kejriwal founded AAP, Hindi for “common man’s party”, in 2011, riding on an anticorruption crusade. He went on to pull off thumping electoral wins over Modi’s poll-strong BJP in 2015 and in 2020, when he won 67 and 62 seats in successive elections to a 70-member assembly.

However, in the national election of 2019, the BJP swept all seven seats from Delhi in the parliament. The voter bases of the two parties partly overlap, including on elements of Hindu majoritarianism, analysts told Al Jazeera.

By closing in on Kejriwal, the Modi government not only risks positioning itself as authoritarian and arrogant, said Asim Ali, a political commentator, but could also alienate voters undecided between the BJP and AAP. Now, they “may stick with AAP out for sympathy, or even vote for Congress out of spite”.

“The risk for BJP is to make Kejriwal into a martyr,” he said.

Amid arrests and raids of opposition leaders, critics and journalists, India has slipped in international democratic indices under Modi. The government has said the reports are unreliable and, now, plans to come up with its own index.

“[The arrests] demonstrate the desperation of the Indian authorities and a blatant disregard for human rights,” Aakar Patel, chair of the board of Amnesty International in India, told Al Jazeera. “What we are witnessing is a government consolidating its power by consistent weaponisation of laws and central financial agencies at the expense of the people – and rights – that it deems dispensable.”

Since Modi came to power in 2014, 95 percent of the cases taken up by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) – India’s premier investigative agency – and the ED have been against politicians from the opposition. This represents a rise of 60 percentage points for the CBI, and 54 percentage points for the ED, from the days of the previous Congress-led government that ruled from 2004 to 2014.

“It’s imperative that all state institutions function properly and with complete respect for human rights, including the Enforcement Directorate, the Election Commission and the justice system, to guarantee that the Indian population can fully and fairly exercise their civil and political rights before, during and after the general election,” Patel added.

‘INDIA will give befitting reply’

Kejriwal’s arrest also set off a wave of condemnations from opposition political parties – including those that have drifted away from the INDIA bloc in recent weeks.

Minutes after the arrest, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said: “A scared dictator wants to create a dead democracy.”

The Trinamool Congress that rules in the eastern state of West Bengal and has in recent days decided to contest the national election on its own — after previously being part of the INDIA alliance — also criticised the arrest.

“How can we expect fair elections in India if sitting CMs and prominent opposition leaders are arrested weeks before polls?” asked Trinamool leader Derek O’Brien on X.

In Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister MK Stalin described the arrest as a “fascist” step. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the arrest was “outright vicious and part of a callous plot to silence all opposition voices just ahead of the general elections”. Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Vijayan’s Communist Party of India (Marxist) are both part of the INDIA bloc.

Akhilesh Yadav, former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh whose Samajwadi Party is also part of the INDIA bloc, said Kejriwal’s arrest would “give birth to a new people’s revolution”. He said the arrests of opposition leaders showed that the BJP was “imprisoned in the fear of defeat” in the coming elections.

Most opinion polls suggest Modi and the BJP are positioned for a comfortable win in the elections, with the prime minister setting a target of 400 seats in India’s 543-seat lower house for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that the party leads. The NDA won 353 seats in 2019.

Meanwhile, AAP’s remaining leadership is trying to pick up the pieces. “They can arrest [Kejriwal], but they cannot arrest his ideology,” said Bharadwaj, Delhi’s health minister. “[He] is an idea which is germinating in each lane and neighbourhood.”

The BJP, however, lauded the arrest, describing Kejriwal as the “kingpin of the liquor scam”.

Late on Thursday evening, Sambit Patra, the BJP’s national spokesperson, took a dig at Kejriwal. “[AAP says] Arvind Kejriwal is not a person, he is an idea. I should say he is a bad idea.”

Mumbai, India – Loud chants and songs on justice echoed around Shivaji Park in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, as thousands of people gathered at the iconic venue that had played frequent host to rallies by freedom fighters when the country fought for independence from the British decades ago.

This time, the slogans called for a different “freedom” – from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party government.

On stage, Bollywood singers Vishal and Rekha Bhardwaj sang classic songs from popular films, new and old. The park was decked in flags and life-sized cardboard cutouts of politicians from the opposition Indian National Congress (INC) party. Police officers were everywhere, but the atmosphere was festive – almost resembling that of a rock concert. The man at the centre of the event: Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family that ruled India for most of its first 50 years after independence.

On Sunday evening, Gandhi and a bevy of leaders from other opposition parties launched the election campaign of their Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) from Shivaji Park, a day after the Election Commission of India announced dates for the world’s largest vote. Nearly a billion Indians will elect their next government in a seven-phase election that starts on April 19 and ends with the declaration of results on June 4.

The INDIA alliance hopes to challenge Modi’s BJP, which is aiming to win a third straight term in office, riding on the back of the prime minister’s personal popularity, even as the Congress and other critics have accused it of dividing the nation on religious lines and favouring select industrialists.

At the heart of the opposition alliance’s efforts are long marches undertaken by Gandhi across the length and breadth of the country, to galvanise support against Modi. His Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (Uniting India for Justice March) had culminated in Mumbai on Saturday.

The marches and Gandhi’s message of unity and justice resonated with supporters at Shivaji Park on Sunday.

Ganggu Bai, a 40-year-old cook who lives in Mumbai’s Dharavi – one of the world’s largest slum clusters made famous globally by the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire – was among those at the Sunday rally.

“I am here to support the future of our country. and women’s rights,” she said. “This event gives me hope and feels like it is actually for the people of India,” she added.

But for Gandhi, the Congress and the INDIA alliance to turn that sentiment into a national wave against the ruling government, they’ll need the votes of more than their core supporters: In the last national elections in 2019, the Congress won just 52 seats in the Lok Sabha or lower house of parliament, while the BJP won an overwhelming majority with 303 seats.

 

Political message

Addressing the rally, Gandhi insisted that the INDIA alliance’s fight was not against a political party [referring to the BJP] or the prime minister – but for a vision of India.

“There is a word ‘Shakti’ in Hinduism. We are fighting against a Shakti. The question is, what is that Shakti. The soul of the king is in the EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) and every institution of the country, including the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Income Tax department,” he said, adding that these institutions are the only reason the BJP is in power.

The allegation: The “king” is Modi, EVMs can be hacked, and the government is using law enforcement agencies to coerce opposition members and business leaders into submission.

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#WATCH | Mumbai, Maharashtra: At the conclusion ceremony of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi says, “There is a word ‘Shakti’ in Hinduism. We are fighting against a Shakti. The question is, what is that Shakti. The soul of the King is in the EVM. This… pic.twitter.com/lL9h9W0sRf

— ANI (@ANI) March 17, 2024

Several key politicians from the INDIA alliance, like Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Tamil Nadu state Chief Minister MK Stalin and former Maharashtra state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, the former chief minister of Maharashtra, also attended the rally.

“Ab ki baar, BJP tadipaar [This time, the BJP will be exiled],” Thackeray said and added that those who tried to divide them [the INDIA alliance] would be defeated.

“Wherever Rahul goes, it looks like a festival,” Stalin told the cheering crowds.

Then, he alluded to the litmus test that awaits the alliance.

“The real victory of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra stands in defeating BJP and capturing Delhi,” he said.

Are Gandhi’s marches working?

Gandhi’s rally at Shivaji Park came a day after he concluded his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra – a 6,600km (4,100-mile) march from India’s east to west, with detours in each state he passed through. His promise: “panch nyay” or “five pillars of justice” for women, youth, farmers, labourers and justice in terms of equity.

During the walk, he announced a one lakh rupee ($1,200) annual payout to every woman below the poverty line, and a 50 percent reservation in in all new recruitments of central government jobs for poor families.

He began walking on January 15 this year in the conflict-torn northeast Indian state of Manipur, promising to bring peace to the region where tensions between the state’s mainly Hindu Meitei majority and the predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo have led to violence killing hundreds and displacing more than 60,000 people. Traversing west from Manipur, Gandhi ended his walk in Mumbai on March 16.

Previously, he also walked from South India all the way to Kashmir in the north, between September 2022 and January 2023, in a march called Bharat Jodo Yatra (Unite India walk), which focused on fighting against poverty, unemployment and growing polarisation between Hindus and Muslims in India.

Those messages are what inspired Sudha Prakash to walk with Gandhi in his first Bharat Jodo Yatra.

“I walked to show solidarity. I also walked to derive strength and hope from the thousands of others who walked, each with their own vision – and yet one that was also shared – of a better India for every single Indian,” Prakash, 60, who works as a teacher in elementary education in Mumbai, told Al Jazeera.

“I got an opportunity to meet so many people, people from different parts of the country, doing different things, belonging to different communities, representing so many Indias … it was wonderful. I came back exhilarated, emotionally charged and filled with hope,” she added.

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Aiyshwarya Mahadev, a spokesperson of the Indian National Congress hailed both the yatras as the largest exercises the Congress party has undertaken in its recent past to connect to the masses.

“We wanted to hear the voices on the ground and give them a voice. So during both the yatras we saw Rahul Gandhi listening to voices that hardly ever get heard, of people from communities that have been traditionally oppressed and marginalised,” she told Al Jazeera.

“This yatra is not about political pomp or any chest thumping, It was honestly about reaching the people on the ground, hearing their voices and becoming their voices. In this aspect it has been a massive success.”

But many Indians are not convinced. The BJP has often derisively termed snubbed Gandhi’s marches as designed to “break”, not “unite”, India.

Ujal Bhatia, a former Indian civil servant, said he doesn’t believe that Gandhi’s marches will lead to electoral gains for the Congress.

“The narrative of the BJP holds sway over much of the country – Hindutva, strong government plus welfarism which delivers palliatives to the poor,” he told Al Jazeera. Hindutva refers to the Hindu majoritarian political ideology  of the BJP. The Modi government has also, over its decade in power, initiated a series of welfare schemes targeting women and other traditionally disadvantaged sections of society, though critics question the government’s claims on the scale of delivery of these programmes.

“Rahul will get a lot of good vibes from his travels but Congress cadres are weak and the Gandhi family is reluctant to cede power to regional leaders,” Bhatia added.

Raj Malhotra, a 33-year old lawyer from Bangalore, shared a similar view.

“Enough people in the country are fed up with the divisive politics and crony capitalism but the opposition seems clueless in using this to its advantage. A huge part of this is because for more than a decade, the Congress party has neglected to pay attention to organisational weaknesses,” Malhotra told Al Jazeera and accused the party of nepotism and dynastic politics.

“While Rahul Gandhi might still be a viable candidate, he suffers from being made out to be a “pappu” by BJP’s propaganda factory. The party really needs to look inwards and sort its internal mess out,” he added. The BJP and its social media supporters have long described Gandhi as “Pappu”, a pejorative in Hindi-speaking northern India for someone who is intellectually dull.

‘Democracy’ vs ‘command and control’

Sam Pitroda, telecom engineer and adviser to two former Congress prime ministers of India, Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, conceded that the party looks far more chaotic than the BJP. But that, he said, was in essence what democracy is about.

“The BJP is based on command and control, while the Congress party is not structured and based on cooperation and co-creation. So sometimes this looks like chaos. But that’s the core design of the party,” he told Al Jazeera. “People get confused that arguments and disagreements over party policies means there is lack of organisation and unity. But if you want democracy, you have to let people argue and not be dictatorial.

“Rahul Gandhi is also a smart and capable leader. It is the BJP propaganda which invests in defaming him. How about before elections we have a national debate between Gandhi and Modi and then we can see who the real “pappu” is,” Pitroda said.

Mahadev added that the marches have also played a positive role in uniting the Congress party’s members and workers.

“Through the yatras, Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Priyanka Gandhi [Rahul’s sister] and other leaders were all on the ground and the workers got the chance to meet and interact with them. That further galvanised the cadre and emboldened them to work with renewed vigour,” Mahadev said.

“It is a reality that in today’s India, the voices of the opposition get stifled and at times, the future looks bleak, but through this sort of engagement where a worker is shown that the work that he is doing on ground is important, helps the party and is reminded of the huge role he plays in our success.”

What’s next?

The INDIA alliance has also experienced fissures with key leaders exiting the bloc over political differences. But Mahadev said that through the yatras, the opposition’s manifesto has been shaped.

“When we did the first phase of the yatra, we walked through different states and interacted with different stakeholders across the board who spoke about their issues. This helped shape our narrative and gave us the basis for several of our manifesto,” she said. “Several regional parties and our allies in the INDIA bloc also have representations and ideas which will be put forward as the promises we make during elections.”

Mahadev acknowledged that it was unclear how much the marches would directly lead to votes for the Congress or its partners. But that, she said, was never the primary intention behind the yatras, in any case.

“His footsteps may not always transform into votes in place but the idea of the yatras was to talk to people on the ground who came from various socioeconomic structures, vocations and even marginalised communities,” she said. “These meetings were not political gatherings but his interactions to listen and to understand their reality, understand their issues and be a voice for them.”

For Gandhi, she said, the marches were about striving for “peace and unity”, and to “fight for India as a democracy”.

New Delhi, India – India, the world’s largest democracy, has kicked off its two and a half month long parliamentary election to decide who will rule the South Asian nation.

On Saturday, the Election Commission of India – the country’s independent poll-conducting body – announced the dates for a democratic exercise that is unmatched in scale globally, and in history.

From the Himalayas in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south, from the hills of the east to the deserts in the west, and in concrete jungles that are some of the world’s biggest cities to the smallest of villages, an estimated 969 million voters are eligible to cast their ballots. They will elect 543 politicians to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament. Two other members are nominated, to make up a total strength of 545 in the house.

India’s election is colossal, colourful and complex. Here are seven ways in which it is unparalleled in size.

82 days, seven phases

The election process that started on Saturday will continue for 82 days until results are announced on June 4. With the announcement of the schedule, a model code of conduct also kicks in – campaign rules now apply, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is not supposed to announce new policies that could influence voters.

Voting will run in seven phases from April 19 to June 1, said Rajiv Kumar, chief election commissioner of India. The counting of votes will take place on June 4. Assembly elections for the states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim will also take place along with the national elections.

After April 19, the other voting dates are April 26, May 7, May 13, May 20, May 25 and June 1. Some states will complete voting on a single day, while others will have voting spread out across several phases.

Over the years, the number of days over which voting has stretched has varied a lot – from the shortest ever four days in 1980 to 39 days in the 2019 election, to 44 days in 2024.

The primary reason for the multiphased election is for the deployment of huge federal security forces required to check everything from polling-related violence or attempts at rigging, according to N Gopalaswami, the former chief election commissioner of India.

Still, staggered polls are no guarantee for free and fair elections as longer campaigning favours the ruling party of the day, said N Bhaskara Rao, chairman of the New Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies, and a pioneer in election research in India. Rao argued that the process should be shortened. The longer the process, the more the opportunity for the ruling party to use government infrastructure to campaign.

969 million voters

The size of India’s electorate is more than the population of all the countries of Europe combined.

They will cast their votes through 5.5 million electronic voting machines at 1.05 million polling stations, of which some are located in the snow-clad mountains in the Himalayas, the deserts of Rajasthan and sparsely populated islands in the Indian Ocean.

The Election Commission will deploy about 15 million polling staff and security personnel to conduct the elections. They will trek across glaciers and deserts, ride elephants and camels, and travel by boats and helicopters to ensure every voter can cast their ballot.

A $14.4bn election bill

It is expected to be the world’s most expensive election. Spending by political parties and candidates to woo voters will likely cost more than 1.2 trillion rupees ($14.4bn), said Rao, whose organisation regularly estimates the country’s poll expenditure.

That would be twice what was spent in India’s 2019 elections – 600 billion rupees ($7.2bn). The total spending on the US presidential and congressional races in 2020 was also $14.4bn.

Most of India’s election spending is not publicly disclosed. Candidates spend unaccounted money to woo voters. The election scrutiny machinery is weak in detecting cash transactions, said Gopalaswami, referring to attempts by candidates to directly bribe voters with money or other enticements, from alcohol to clothes.

Polling booth at 15,256 feet

Holding elections in the world’s seventh largest nation by area is a complex task.

In 2019, election workers travelled 300 miles (482 km) over four days across winding mountain roads and river valleys to set up a polling booth for one voter in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China. Beijing claims a part of the state, and ensuring elections are held there is vital for New Delhi to demonstrate its sovereignty over the region.

Election officials also set up a voting booth at 15,256 feet (4,650 metres) in a village in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, making it the highest polling station in the world. Far off the country’s east coast, on the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, workers travelled through crocodile-infested mangrove swamps and dense jungles to reach polling booths.

In Malkangiri district of Odisha, where left-wing Maoist fighters have a presence, polling staff walked 15km (9 miles) through forests and hills to protect electronic voting machines from the rebels after voting. Intelligence agencies had warned them that using cars could have made them easier targets.

“On sheer numbers, it’s gigantic and complicated, but in a sense simple also because at each level the law is very clear about what are the duties and responsibilities of each polling official,’’ said Gopalaswmi. “Complications are arising as competition is becoming fierce,’’ he said, adding, that implementation of the model code of conduct has become increasingly challenging for the election commission.

2,660 parties

A multiparty democracy, India has about 2,660 registered political parties. Parties competing in elections each get symbols – like the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s lotus, the opposition Congress party’s hand, and others, ranging from an elephant to a bicycle, and a comb to an arrow. These to help voters easily identify candidates, in a country where almost a quarter of the population is not literate.

In 2019, seven national parties, 43 state parties and 623 unrecognised political parties participated in the elections. Parties that have a significant footprint in a state legislature are recognised as state parties. Those with a meaningful presence in multiple states get the national party tag.

In 2019, 36 parties were able to win one or more seats in the Lok Sabha. In all, about 8,054 candidates, including 3,461 independents, contested those elections. Of the 543 winning candidates, 397 were from national parties, 136 were from state parties, six were from unrecognised parties and four were independent.

A record 612 million people of a 912 million strong electorate cast their votes in the last election, registering the highest ever voter turnout at 67.4 percent. Women’s participation also increased to an historic 67.18 percent in 2019.

303 against 52

The principal protagonists of the 2024 battle are Prime Minister Modi and his BJP, who lead a coalition of more than three dozen parties; and the main opposition Congress party-led alliance of about two dozen parties.

In 2019, the BJP secured a landslide victory with 303 seats. Its coalition had a total of 353 seats. The Congress party won got 52 seats, and 91 with partners.

Currently, the BJP is in pole position following recent state victories and is expected to win a majority, according to opinion polls. The BJP alone controls 12 of India’s 28 states, while the Congress governs in three states.

Still, Indian political history is littered with instances of parties winning major state elections only to lose the national vote soon after. The BJP knows that better than most: In 2004, its then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee called early elections after winning the key state elections of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh before losing the Lok Sabha vote to a Congress-led coalition.

370 or 404?

Modi has set a target of 370 seats for the BJP, 67 more than in 2019; and for its alliance to cross 400 seats. He is seeking a third term in office.

The last time any party crossed 370 seats was in the 1984 election. The Congress party won 414 seats following the assassination of the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

If Modi wins and completes five years, he will be the third longest serving prime minister in Indian history. The country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru ruled for about 16 years and 9 months consecutively, while his daughter Indira Gandhi governed for a total of about 15 years and 11 months.