New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a “dangerous mission”, to turn India into a “one nation, one leader” set up, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said Saturday, a day after walking out of Tihar Jail on interim bail granted by the Supreme Court in the excise policy case.
Addressing Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) workers and supporters in the party’s New Delhi headquarters, which was thronged by hundreds, Kejriwal said, over the next few weeks, he will campaign across the country in his “fight against dictatorship” to save the country’s democracy and constitution.
Kejriwal was arrested from his official residence by the Enforcement Directorate on 21 March. His legal team had made a case for his interim bail on the grounds that he needed to campaign for the party. He has been granted bail till 1 June.
He asserted Saturday that he would not walk into the “BJP’s trap” by tendering his resignation from the post of chief minister.
“They hatched a political conspiracy to make me resign. If you imprison democracy, remember that the government will be run from jail. I won’t resign. Hemant Soren (former Jharkhand chief minister) should also not have resigned,” Kejriwal said.
Amid cheers and slogans, Kejriwal said that apart from Opposition faces, senior leaders of the BJP will also not be spared by Modi. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will be “removed from his post” within two months if the BJP returns to power, Kejriwal claimed, as people hooted and clapped.
“The prime minister is on a dangerous mission. He wants one nation, one leader.
He wants all the opposition leaders imprisoned & the politics of all the BJP leaders finished. Tejashwi Yadav, Mamata Banerjee, Pinarayi Vijayan, Uddhav Thackeray will be put in jail.
“Politics of L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sumitra Mahajan, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Dr Raman Singh have been finished. Whose turn will it be next? It is Yogi Adityanath’s. If the BJP returns to power, he will be removed from the post of chief minister within two months. Only one dictator will remain,” Kejriwal said.
On questions raised by the ruling party over the prime ministerial face of the INDIA bloc, with Modi’s refrain being that there are multiple claimants, Kejriwal said the question should be posed to the BJP instead.
“Modi is turning 75 on 17 September next year. In 2014, Modi had made a rule that whoever turns 75 will be made to retire. It started with Advani, followed by Murli Manohar Joshi, Sumitra Mahajan, Yashwant Sinha. Now it’s Modi’s turn. He is not seeking votes for himself but to make Amit Shah the next prime minister. Whoever is going to vote for the BJP should keep this in mind,” the AAP national convenor said.
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‘PM hasn’t spared any effort to crush small party like us’
Ahead of his speech in the party office, Kejriwal visited the Hanuman Temple at Delhi’s Connaught Place. Accompanied by his wife Sunita Kejriwal and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann among others, the Delhi CM spent around 10 minutes in the temple where the priests presented him with a miniature mace.
He then left for the nearby Navgrah Temple where he performed aarti with his wife. During the day, he is also scheduled to take out two roadshows along with Mann in south Delhi’s Mehrauli and east Delhi’s Gandhi Nagar.
“We took the blessings of Lord Hanuman, Shiva, Shani Maharaj. Bajrangbali’s blessings are upon us. That’s why I am here. No one really expected that I would walk out otherwise,” Kejriwal said.
The release of Kejriwal, who will have to surrender on 2 June, has come as a major boost for the AAP, and the larger INDIA bloc, before the remaining four phases of polling in the Lok Sabha elections. Among the seats where voting is yet to take place, the AAP is contesting four in Delhi, one in Haryana, and 13 in Punjab. In Punjab, it finds itself competing with the Congress due to the inability to reach a seat-sharing agreement among the two INDIA bloc partners.
Speaking before Kejriwal Saturday, Mann said the AAP will hand a drubbing to parties including the Congress and the BJP in Punjab. Incidentally, the AAP and the Congress leadership have been trying to ensure seamless coordination among its workers on the ground in Delhi where the two parties are fighting jointly.
The AAP had billed the event as a press conference, but it ended up being a public meeting, something that Mann, with a smile, pointed out in his address. “It essentially shows that Kejriwal is an idea that cannot be shackled. People are understandably venting their emotions,” Mann said.
In his speech, Kejriwal asserted that the BJP will fall short of the required number to form the next government, claiming that even the betting market is placing the BJP in the seat range of 230-240.
“The PM has not spared any effort to crush a small party like us. This is despotism. No other party has been harassed like we have been. The PM says he is fighting corruption. If you want to fight corruption, learn from Kejriwal, not by inducting the country’s biggest crooks and thieves in your party,” Kejriwal said.
With inputs from Monami Gogoi
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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