NEW DELHI: Several members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were detained on Wednesday at a demonstration demanding the resignation of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, an opposition leader who has been arrested in a corruption case.
The protest in the capital New Delhi prompted police effortsto disperse the crowd using water cannon and came a day afterthe Delhi High Court dismissed a plea challenging Kejriwal’sarrest, saying his detention was justified.
Kejriwal was arrested by the financial crime-fighting agencylast month on allegations of corruption relating to Delhi’sliquor policy, ahead of general elections beginning on April 19in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third term.
Kejriwal was sent to prison until April 15 and is currentlylodged in Tihar jail, where he joined two other senior leadersof his party who were imprisoned in the same case.
Kejriwal gets further detention in graft case
Kejriwal filed an appeal against the decision in the SupremeCourt on Wednesday but the top court rejected his plea for anurgent hearing, local media reported.
Protesting near the headquarters of Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the capital, BJP members chanted slogans calling the leader corrupt and a thief. Police hauled them into buses and removed them from the spot.
“A government cannot be run from prison … if Arvind Kejriwal does not resign, the law will do its work,” BJP’s Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, leader of opposition in the Delhi assembly, told ANI news agency.
AAP leaders, who maintain the case against Kejriwal is “fabricated”, said he would not resign.
The AAP suffered a fresh setback on Wednesday when Delhi’sSocial Welfare Minister Raaj Kumar Anand resigned from his postand from the party, saying he did not want his name to beconnected with “corrupt behaviour”.
AAP leaders said Anand may have quit due to a fear of enforcement agencies.
“We have said only one thing from the start, that theintention behind Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest is to break the party,to finish it,” AAP’s Sanjay Singh, who was granted bail in thesame graft case last week, told reporters.
Nearly 30 opposition parties which have formed an alliancecalled INDIA, of which the AAP is a member, have spoken againstKejriwal’s arrest, saying such action against opposition groupsis aimed at denying them a level playing field in the elections.
BJP and Modi’s government have denied the accusations andsay enforcement agencies are only doing their job.