Tajender Singh Bagga row: Method behind the three-state arrest madness
The Punjab-Delhi-Haryana circus involving the arrest and release of BJP leader Tajender Singh Bagga falls into the familiar pattern of the police force bending over backwards to please their political masters. It showed the ruling AAP in Punjab is no different at throttling dissent than all the other ruling parties it rails against, including the BJP. If that facet of the party’s intolerance was not as visible earlier, it was because the AAP doesn’t have control over the police force in Delhi where it has been in power for less than a decade.
Ever since it stormed to power in Punjab, AAP founder and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has been accused of using the state’s police as the enforcement arm he never got to exercise till then, to smack down opponents. Like he sent a Punjab Police team to the Delhi residence of erstwhile ranking AAP leader and acclaimed poet Kumar Vishwas to intimidate him. Another former AAP leader Alka Lamba got a Punjab Police knock on her door in Delhi for identical reasons.
Compare these actions with the recent arrest of outspoken Gujarat lawmaker Jignesh Mevani by the Assam Police for critiquing the Centre. Or the raid raj of Central enforcement agencies for alleged economic offences whenever elections are around the corner. Are they any different? The arrest of the Ranas in Maharashtra over loudspeaker noise pollution and their Hanuman Chalisa challenge, with the police threatening to invoke sedition charges against them, too, mirrors the misuse of the law enforcement agency to serve political goals.
The way the Punjab Police treated Bagga like a petty criminal, bundling him into a vehicle without an arrest warrant and refusing to give the Sikh leader time to even wear his turban and put on his slippers, is reminiscent of its brutal repression during the days of militancy. In the process, they made a rabble-rousing political small fry a household name in the country.
It’s appalling that Kejriwal is replicating all the bad examples of vendetta politics. That free speech and democracy are coterminous is axiomatic. Free speech is not just about tolerating criticism but also respecting it. Unfortunately, it’s that hallowed space that is shrinking steadily and corroding democracy in the country.