WHAT 2 ARRESTS REVEAL ABOUT OUR DEMOCRACY

The booking of Hemant Soren and Arvind Kejriwal just before polls suggests something is not quite right in the state of our democracy. The timing of the actions is telling

- KAPIL SIBAL

THE arrest of the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Hemant Soren, was unprecedented. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) claimed he was arrested after he had resigned.

This is not the entire truth. In fact, the ED had already decided to arrest him while he was at his residence. But the formal arrest took place within the precincts of the Raj Bhawan, where Soren had gone to hand over his resignation claiming that his party still enjoyed the confidence of the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly.

Arvind Kejriwal, however, was arrested while he was chief minister and continues to be so despite the special court remanding him to the ED's custody for six days. Every leader of the opposition has been facing the threat of arrest under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA). Often in the past, this government has used both the Central Bureau of Investighation (CBI) and the ED for either prosecuting or threatening prosecution to trigger defections in order to destabilise elected governments in opposition-ruled states.

This is the first time in the history of India that the investigating machinery and political establishment are working in tandem on such a large scale. We may have seen isolated instances prior to 2014 of a similar alignment of purpose with the CBI, but never before in such an insidious fashion.