‘Face the consequences’
Congress and other leading figures in the INDIA bloc have also found themselves under investigation.
Delhi Chief Minister and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal has repeatedly been summoned by investigators probing alleged corruption in the allocation of liquor licences.
Earlier this month police arrested Hemant Soren, until then the chief minister of Jharkhand and another leading figure in the opposition alliance, for allegedly facilitating an illegal land sale.
India’s main financial investigation agency, the Enforcement Directorate, has ongoing probes against at least four other chief ministers or their families, all of whom belong to the BJP’s political opponents.
The recent record of government agencies showed they were “behaving as handmaidens of the ruling party to cow down the political opposition”, Hartosh Singh Bal of current affairs magazine The Caravan told AFP.
Other investigations have been dropped against erstwhile BJP rivals who later switched their allegiance to the ruling party.
Virendra Sachdeva, president of the BJP’s Delhi branch, said Friday that Congress had only itself to blame for the freezing of its accounts.
“It is unfortunate that a big party like Congress is not following government rules,” he told the Press Trust of India news agency.
“If it is not following the rules, then it has to face the consequences.”
(With inputs from PTI and AFP)
