A top opponent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to keep fighting “dictatorship” before he returned to jail on Sunday, following elections widely expected to produce another landslide victory for the Hindu-nationalist leader.
Arvind Kejriwal is among several opposition leaders under criminal investigation, with colleagues describing his arrest the month before the general elections began in April as a “political conspiracy” orchestrated by Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The chief minister of Delhi and a key leader in an alliance formed to compete against Modi, Kejriwal was detained in March over a long-running corruption probe.
Photo: EPA-EFE
He was later released and allowed to campaign, but ordered to return to jail once voting ended.
“When power becomes dictatorship, then jail becomes a responsibility,” said Kejriwal, who promised to continue “fighting” from behind bars.
“I don’t know when I will return,” he told supporters in an emotional departure speech at his Aam Aadmi party headquarters. “I don’t know what they will do to me ... every drop of my blood is for the country.”
Kejriwal later returned to jail, his party spokesman said.
Exit polls showed Modi was well on track to triumph, with the prime minister saying he was confident that “the people of India have voted in record numbers” to re-elect his government.
Results are expected today, but supporters of Modi in his constituency of Varanasi — the spiritual capital of the Hindu faith — said they believed their leader’s win was secure.
“His government is coming back,” said Nand Lal, selling flowers outside a temple.
Voting in the seventh and final staggered round of the six-week election ended on Saturday, held in brutally hot conditions across swaths of the nation.
India’s top court granted Kejriwal bail last month, giving a fleeting boost to the opposition’s quixotic campaign to oust Modi, but ordered him to return to custody after the election.
Kejriwal, 55, has been chief minister of Delhi for nearly a decade and first came to office as a staunch anti-corruption crusader.
His government was accused of corruption when it implemented a policy to liberalize the sale of liquor in 2021 and give up a lucrative government stake in the sector.
The policy was withdrawn the following year, but the resulting probe into the alleged corrupt allocation of licenses has since led to the jailing of two top Kejriwal allies.
“All of you, take care of yourselves,” Kejriwal, who has consistently denied wrongdoing and refused to relinquish his post, wrote earlier on social media. “I will take care of you all in jail.”
Modi’s political opponents and international rights groups have long sounded the alarm about threats to India’s democracy.
US think tank Freedom House this year said that the BJP had “increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents.”
Rahul Gandhi, the most prominent member of the opposition Congress party and scion of a dynasty that dominated Indian politics for decades, was convicted of criminal libel last year after a complaint by a member of Modi’s party.
His two-year prison sentence saw him disqualified from parliament until the verdict was suspended by a higher court and raised concerns over democratic norms in the world’s most populous country.
Hemant Soren, the former chief minister of the eastern state of Jharkhand, was also arrested in February in a separate corruption probe.
Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi and Soren are all members of an opposition alliance composed of more than two dozen parties, but the bloc struggled to make inroads against Modi.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Hundreds of people in rainbow colors gathered on Saturday in South Africa’s tourist magnet Cape Town to honor the world’s first openly gay imam, who was killed last month. Muhsin Hendricks, who ran a mosque for marginalized Muslims, was shot dead last month near the southern city of Gqeberha. “I was heartbroken. I think it’s sad especially how far we’ve come, considering how progressive South Africa has been,” attendee Keisha Jensen said. Led by motorcycle riders, the mostly young crowd walked through the streets of the coastal city, some waving placards emblazoned with Hendricks’s image and reading: “#JUSTICEFORMUHSIN.” No arrest
RSS