Hours after a court in Delhi gave a clean chit to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia in the excise policy case, differences in the Opposition camp erupted in the open. While the Congress took a dig at the AAP, Kejriwal hit back by pointing out that he went to prison, but none of the Congress leaders did. The verdict is also likely to put the BJP on the defensive, bringing into question its anti-corruption narrative directed at the Opposition.
“The BJP is not a political party. It is a shape-shifter, a wishful serpent — Icchadhari Naag. It will stoop to any level for one obsessive goal: defeat Congress — Congress Mukt Bharat. For 12 years they spewed venom at the TMC. And now? Narendra Modi himself is showering it with praise – not out of respect, but to land a cheap blow at Congress,” said Congress media department head Pawan Khera.
“Elections are coming. So the script is predictable. Cases against Congress leaders will suddenly accelerate — @PChidambaram_IN has already been dragged back into the spotlight because Tamil Nadu is going for polls. Meanwhile, proceedings against their convenient ‘allies’ in the AAP and others will quietly vanish in light of the Gujarat and Punjab elections. This is the BJP playbook: vendetta as governance and agencies as campaign tools,” he said.
Hours later, asked about the comments, Kejriwal hit back at the Congress, saying, “I want to ask you — Kejriwal went to jail. Did Robert Vadra go to jail? Sanjay Singh went to jail. Did Rahul Gandhi go to jail? Manish Sisodia went to jail. Did Sonia Gandhi ji go to jail? With what face is the Congress saying all this? Does the Congress have no shame?”
A senior AAP MP said the Congress could have kept the acrimony aside at a time like this. “We know that all Opposition parties are fighting one enemy, the BJP. Then, why couldn’t they keep their differences aside for a day?”
However, Congress insiders said they suspect the “clean chit” might be the “BJP’s ploy” to create a Kejriwal versus Rahul Gandhi battle and keep the Opposition divided.
Where other Opposition parties stand
In contrast, other Opposition parties, many of them the Congress’s allies in the INDIA bloc, welcomed the verdict.
“The Union BJP government must not mortgage the integrity of investigating agencies for short-term politics. Have some shame. Well done, my respected friend Thiru. @ArvindKejriwal, and Thiru. @msisodia, for standing firm through it all and letting the truth speak for itself,” Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin said in a social media post.
The Trinamool Congress too cheered — “Satyameva Jayate! BJP learn your lesson while there is still time. All your dirty tricks, your ED, your CBI – all these puppets will die in the face of truth,” said party MP Mahua Moitra — and so did the Samajwadi Party and the RJD.
TMC Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose told The Indian Express that the Modi government’s “vicious and vindictive” are fully exposed. “All that the BJP wanted to do was to destroy AAP. The BJP won’t succeed,” she said.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said the verdict was nothing short of a “moral death sentence” for the BJP and added, “Today, every honest soul will breathe a sigh of hopeful relief, while BJP supporters must be writhing in deep shame and profound self-reproach. The BJP has betrayed the people of Delhi,” he said.
CPI(M) MP John Brittas told Express that the Modi government’s “weaponisation of investigating agencies as tools of political vendetta stands fully exposed”. Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi said the CBI “should now be rebranded as Central Bureau of Imagination: BJP’s premier Agency”.
Third reprieve in a week
The verdict in the excise case is the third legal reprieve for an Opposition leader this week. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court stayed criminal proceedings against Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren for allegedly not responding to the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) summons under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The same day, the Punjab and Haryana High Court exonerated former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda in the CBI case related to the allotment of land to Associated Journals Limited. Two months earlier, another court had refused to take cognisance of the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) chargesheet in the National Herald money laundering case against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and others.
One of the recurring themes of the BJP’s political narrative — apart from a combination of communal rhetoric, hyper-nationalism, welfare schemes, and claims of a resurgent India under Modi — has been that most of the Opposition leaders are corrupt and dynastic and contrasting them with the absence of big-ticket corruption cases against BJP’s central ministers and top leaders since Modi came to power to the Centre in 2014. The Opposition can now be expected to robustly challenge this narrative once more.
With the cases now moving to higher courts — the CBI has already decided to appeal the verdict in the excise case — the likely BJP counter-argument will be that the legal proceedings are far from over. It will be a battle of narratives from now on, with the Opposition arguing that the courts are dismissing corruption cases against their leaders as they are politically motivated and devoid of any merit. In 2022, an Indian Express series on cases against prominent politicians showed that 95% of cases involving politicians filed by the CBI and ED under the Modi government were against the Opposition, and initiated just ahead of elections in particular states.
