AHMEDABAD, INDIA: A top opponent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed on Sunday to keep fighting “dictatorship” before he returned to jail Sunday, following elections widely expected to produce another landslide victory for the Hindu-nationalist leader.
Arvind Kejriwal is among several opposition leaders under criminal investigation, with colleagues describing his arrest the month before the general elections began in April as a “political conspiracy” orchestrated by Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The chief minister of the capital Delhi and a key leader in an alliance formed to compete against Modi, Kejriwal was detained in March over a long-running corruption probe.
He was later released and allowed to campaign but ordered to return to jail once voting ended.
“When power becomes [a] dictatorship, then jail becomes a responsibility,” said Kejriwal, who promised to continue “fighting” from behind bars.
“I don’t know when I will return,” he told supporters in an emotional departure speech at his Aam Aadmi party headquarters.
“I don’t know what they will do to me […] every drop of my blood is for the country.” Kejriwal later returned to jail, his party spokesman told AFP.
‘Take care of yourselves’
Exit polls showed Modi was well on track to triumph, with the premier saying he was confident that “the people of India have voted in record numbers” to re-elect his government.
Results are expected on Tuesday but supporters of Modi in his constituency of Varanasi — the spiritual capital of the Hindu faith — said they believed their leader’s win was secure.
“His government is coming back,” said Nand Lal, selling flowers outside a temple.
Voting in the seventh and final staggered round of the six-week poll ended on Saturday, held in brutally hot conditions across swaths of the country.
People wait to vote at a polling station during the seventh and last phase of India’s general election in Varanasi, India on June 1, 2024. — Reuters
His government was accused of corruption when it implemented a policy to liberalise the sale of liquor in 2021 and give up a lucrative government stake in the sector.
The policy was withdrawn the following year but the resulting probe into the alleged corrupt allocation of licences has since led to the jailing of two top Kejriwal allies.
“All of you, take care of yourselves,” Kejriwal, who has consistently denied wrongdoing and refused to relinquish his post, said earlier on social media.
“I will take care of you all in jail.”
‘Target political opponents’
Modi’s political opponents and international rights groups have long sounded the alarm about threats to India’s democracy.
US think tank Freedom House said this year that the BJP had “increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents”.
Rahul Gandhi, the most prominent member of the opposition Congress party and scion of a dynasty that dominated Indian politics for decades, was convicted of criminal libel last year after a complaint by a member of Modi’s party.
His two-year prison sentence saw him disqualified from parliament until the verdict was suspended by a higher court and raised concerns over democratic norms in the world’s most populous country.
Hemant Soren, the former chief minister of the eastern state of Jharkhand, was also arrested in February in a separate corruption probe.
Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi and Soren are all members of an opposition alliance composed of more than two dozen parties, but the bloc struggled to make inroads against Modi.
Heatstroke kills 33 polling staff on last voting day: UP election chief
At least 33 Indian polling staff died on the last day of voting from heatstroke in just one state, a top election official said on Sunday, after scorching temperatures gripped swathes of the country.
While there have been reports of multiple deaths from the intense heatwave — with temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in many places — the dozens of staff dying in one day marks an especially grim toll.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said temperatures at Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh reached 46.9°C (116°F).
Navdeep Rinwa, chief electoral officer for the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where voting in the seventh and final stage of elections ended Saturday, said 33 polling personnel died due to the heat.
The figure included security guards and sanitation staff.
“A monetary compensation of 1.5 million rupees ($18,000) will be provided to the families of the deceased,” Rinwa told reporters.
Experts say that when a person is dehydrated, extreme heat exposure thickens their blood and causes organs to shut down.
Rinwa reported a separate incident in which a man queueing to vote in the city of Ballia lost consciousness while waiting in line.
“The voter was transported to a health facility, where he was pronounced dead upon arrival,” Rinwa said.
India is no stranger to searing summer temperatures. But years of scientific research have found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
