Express View on Arvind Kejriwal in custody: A moment of deep disquiet

The late-night arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the run-up to a national election is a fraught moment. And a disquieting one. The law must take its course in the case under which the Enforcement Directorate has moved for the first time against a sitting chief minister who defied nine ED summons — it involves alleged kickbacks in Delhi Government’s now-scrapped liquor policy. But the legal denouement yet to come seems to be only the top layer of what appears more like a political blood feud that began roiling not long after the birth of a new party in 2012. The AAP was incubated in the Anna Hazare movement against corruption in 2011, which paved the way for the unseating of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government at the Centre and the coming to power of the Narendra Modi-led BJP. But soon after, having trounced a common enemy, the AAP-and-BJP became the AAP-versus-BJP. What followed was a prolonged political joust in which one side was not above using its size and power to subdue and corner its younger and smaller opponent. Be it through an ordinance that flouted a Supreme Court verdict, or by a series of Lieutenant-Governors who sought to constantly override the elected government, the BJP-led Centre made it increasingly difficult for Delhi’s AAP government to function. The AAP, impatient with the rules of the game, made mistakes too – and it may well be that the case in which its chief minister, his former deputy and a party MP are now implicated is one. But Kejriwal’s arrest late Thursday evening, only weeks to go for the election to begin, seems inextricable from the long festering political rivalry.

There is an unmissable irony in the anti-corruption crusader being hoist with the corruption petard. The BJP must hope that with Kejriwal uprooted from the electoral fray, the idea of Kejriwal would also lose sheen. Despite all his shortcomings and political frailties, that idea encompasses the possibilities of a politics less encumbered by past baggage, and more at home in the mohallas where voters live. It includes the “AAP model” that accords a special emphasis to reviving the government school and health centre. Indeed, across the country, on the street, the Kejriwal-AAP idea has travelled further than is let on by the party’s seats and vote shares in Punjab, Goa and Gujarat apart from Delhi — the states where it has won power or registered a presence so far.

Even as this moment raises serious questions about the limits and constraints on power and the autonomy of institutions in a constitutional democracy, it is also a testing time – not just for the AAP, but also for the larger Opposition alliance, INDIA, that it is a part of. Ahead of the election, they have been delivered a setback, but also handed an opportunity — to give the arrest a larger frame and to take it to the people. Will, or can, they do so? How will the courts respond? How does the imperative of due process play out amid the very genuine concern of a poll process being vitiated with the ED knocking on only Opposition doors? It will need institutions to stand up and processes to be tested — in a democracy, not all answers come from the polling booth.