CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat on Friday condemned the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and alleged that the Enforcement Directorate was being used by the BJP government to hound Opposition leaders.
Kejriwal was arrested by the ED on Thursday night in an excise policy-linked money laundering case.
"We very very strongly condemn the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. It is a lawless act. It is completely motivated by politics of the forthcoming elections, and the ruling party is very clearly using the ED as an instrument to hound the opposition, to weaken the opposition by arresting its leaders, and by harassing opposition leaders," Karat told PTI videos.
"Elections have been announced and you're going to arrest chief ministers. It is absolutely unacceptable. Our party is also protesting against it. We join the protest of the AAP, and demand there should be an immediate reversal of the arrest," she said.
On accusations that Kejriwal's family was not being allowed to meet anyone, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader termed it "absurd and illegal".
"This is absolutely absurd and illegal if this is true. And if they're saying they're not being allowed to meet anyone obviously this is true," she said.
Senior AAP leader and Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Friday claimed the chief minister's family members, including elderly parents, had not been allowed to meet their relatives or party leaders since Thursday evening.
On Electoral Bonds, the CPI(M) leader said the State Bank of India could have released the data earlier, and slammed the BJP for putting in place "the most corrupt system ever".
"The shameless efforts of the government and ruling party to try and fool the Supreme Court that we can't do it and we need three more months, has been shown to be an utter misleading lie.
"All the data (on electoral bonds) is out, which means the SBI had the data all this while and they could have done it three months ago when the court had given the first order in February," said Karat.
The Supreme Court had dismissed an application by the SBI seeking an extension till June 30 to submit the details of Electoral Bonds to the Election Commission of India.
"The government, after the exposure of its most dubious dealings, the quid pro quo, taking donations from companies which were corrupt and being raided, and then freezing those cases just shows how the EC is being used as an instrument to garner money for the ruling party," she said.
"Companies have paid parties, primarily the ruling party... This is a kind of extortion. For example, mining companies are not concerned about Adivasis. Now we know the mining companies have paid crores and crores of rupees for the so-called ease of business policies of the Modi government," she alleged.
Karat said under the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the "most corrupt system" which subverted democracy has been put in place.
"We are only happy that the Supreme Court intervened even though it was late," she added.
The Election Commission on Thursday made public a fresh data set of electoral bonds, including their alpha-numeric numbers that can help match their purchasers with the political parties that received the funds.
Two separate lists of the donors and the recipients were published by the poll panel on its website after the details were submitted to it by the SBI earlier in the day as per a Supreme Court order.
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