Brisk polling in biggest round of LS polls

Out of jail and immediately hitting the campaign trail, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday trained guns at Prime Minister Narendra Modi claiming that he will make way for Amit Shah next year when he turns 75 after sidelining all BJP leaders, including Yogi Adityanath, and jailing Opposition leaders.

Predicting that the BJP will be reduced to “220-230 seats” in the Lok Sabha polls, he claimed that Yogi Adityanath will be removed as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister in two months if at all BJP returns to power to ensure Shah’s elevation as Prime Minister, as Modi himself has set the 75-year retirement rule in his party.

Accusing Modi of being dictatorial and seeking to implement ‘One Nation, One Leader’, Kejriwal insisted that the Prime Minister is not seeking votes for himself  and  people voting for BJP should know that they are not voting for Modi but Shah while wondering whether the latter would implement ‘Modi ki Guarantees’.

He also defended his decision not to resign as Chief Minister after his arrest, as it was a “trap” set by the Prime Minister to “finish off” AAP  and felt that JMM top leader Hemant Soren, who resigned as Jharkhand Chief Minister, also should not have quit his post.

Addressing a press conference that turned out to be a meeting of AAP supporters at the party headquarters here a day after he was released from Tihar jail on interim bail, he also asked Modi to “learn from Kejriwal on how to fight corruption”, as he referred to the induction of leaders who were accused of graft into the BJP. 

In his 20-minute address, which came after his visit to the Hanuman Temple in Connaught Place in the national capital, Kejriwal said Modi wants to crush his party as he knows that the AAP with its good work would replace the BJP.

If Modi does 'good work', no one will talk about AAP but people will not accept the attempts to decimate his party, which is working for the people, Kejriwal said.

“The Prime Minister says he fights against corruption but is inducting thieves and dacoits into his party. A leader who he described as one involved in a Rs 70,000 crore scam was inducted into the party ten days after Modi made the charges. If you want to fight corruption, learn from Kejriwal,” he said, citing instances of sacking and arrests of AAP ministers in Delhi and Punjab.

Warning that Opposition leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Tejashwi Yadav, NK Stalin and Uddhav Thackeray will be jailed by Narendra Modi if BJP wins, he said his arrest was meant to be a message to the country that if Kejriwal can be taken into custody, then anybody can be.

“People need to know, his mission's name is 'One Nation, One Leader'. To achieve this, there are two ways. One is to jail all Opposition leaders and the second is to sideline all leaders in BJP if they win. They have already sidelined L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sumitra Mahajan, Shivraj Singh Chouhan who brought BJP back to power in Madhya Pradesh, Vasundhara Raje, ML Khattar…” Kejriwal said.

“Who is next in line? It is Yogi Adityanath. Take it in writing from me, if BJP wins, the UP Chief Minister will be changed in two months...He wants to crush democracy in this country. I am fighting against it," he said.

Referring to questions on who will be I.N.D.I.A. bloc's Prime Ministerial candidate, he said he has a counter question as Modi is turning 75 next September and he himself has set the retirement rule in the party.

“Now my question is who is BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate? If they can form the government, Yogi Adityanath will be first sidelined and then Amit Shah will be made the Prime Minister. Modiji is not seeking votes for him but for Amit Shah. Who will fulfil Modi's guarantees? Will Amit Shah fulfil it? I don't think they are going to form a government. But those who are going to vote for BJP should know that they are voting for Amit Shah,” he said.

Insisting that I.N.D.I.A. bloc will form the next government and that AAP will be part of it, Kejriwal promised full statehood for Delhi in such a dispensation. Emphasising that he did not resign when he was arrested because Modi had scripted it to finish off the party, he said he wanted to show that if democracy was jailed, it would run from jail.
 

Congress leader Sam Pitroda has stepped down from the post of Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress and his resignation was accepted by the party. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh took to X and announced that Sam Pitroda had decided to resign from the key post "of his own accord".

Pitroda had been under fire over his controversial remark that Indians in the East resemble the Chinese while those in the South look like Africans.

"We could hold together a country as diverse as India -- where people on East look like Chinese, people on West look like Arab, people on North look like maybe White and people in South look like Africans. It doesn't matter. We are all brothers and sisters," Pitroda said during an interview with The Statesman.

The Congress immediately distanced itself from Pitroda's remarks, terming them "unacceptable".

"The analogies drawn by Mr Sam Pitroda in a podcast to illustrate India's diversity are most unfortunate and unacceptable. The Indian National Congress completely dissociates itself from these analogies," Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X.

The BJP also hit out at the Congress over Pitroda's remarks and termed them "racist and divisive".

The Supreme Court Friday granted interim bail to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal till June 1 in the excise policy case.

The top court, however, stated that it will be passing a detailed order over the matter soon.

On Thursday, the Enforcement Directorate had opposed the move to grant interim bail to Kejriwal saying that “any special concession” to him will “amount to anathema to the rule of law and equality… thereby creating two separate classes in the country viz. ordinary people, who are bound by the rule of law as well as the laws of the country, and politicians who can seek exemption from the laws”.

The ED had arrested Kejriwal on March 21 in the excise policy case.

“The right to campaign for an election is neither a fundamental right nor a constitutional right and not even a legal right,” the ED said, maintaining that to its knowledge, “no political leader has been granted interim bail for campaigning even though he is not the contesting candidate”.

After the ED filed its affidavit, the AAP, in a press release, said, “The legal team of Delhi Chief Minister and AAP National Convenor, Shri Arvind Kejriwal, has raised strong objection to the affidavit filed by the Enforcement Directorate opposing interim bail in the Supreme Court.”