Delhi fumes as US again prods India on fair legal process for Kejriwal, Congress

India on Wednesday summoned a top United States diplomat after Washington said it was "closely watching" events following the jailing of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal weeks ahead of Lok Sabha elections.

New Delhi: Notwithstanding protests from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, Washington DC continued to prod New Delhi to ensure fair legal processes, not only for the incarcerated Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal but also in the case of freezing of bank accounts of the opposition Congress ahead of parliamentary elections in India.

New Delhi on Thursday again strongly reacted to the not-so-subtle nudge from President Joe Biden’s administration to maintain a level playing field for the parliamentary elections as well as to ensure fairness of the legal processes.

“The recent remarks by the US State Department are unwarranted. Any such external imputation on our electoral and legal processes is completely unacceptable,” Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), told journalists in New Delhi.

Jaiswal’s comment came hours after one of his counterparts in the US State Department, Matthew Miller, said that Washington DC continued to closely follow the developments related to the recent arrest of Kejriwal, the chief minister of Delhi, as well as the allegations about the freezing of bank accounts of the opposition Congress.

Miller was asked to comment after the Government of India summoned the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US embassy in New Delhi, Gloria Berbena, to the South Block in Raisina Hill on Wednesday and conveyed to her its “strong objection” over an earlier remark of a spokesperson of the American State Department on the arrest of Kejriwal by the Enforcement Directorate.

“We continue to follow these actions closely, including the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal,” Miller said during a routine media briefing at the US State Department headquarters in Washington DC. “We are also aware of the Congress party’s allegations that tax authorities have frozen some of their bank accounts in a manner that will make it challenging to effectively campaign in the upcoming elections, and we encourage fair, transparent, and timely legal processes for each of these issues.”

A journalist had asked him for his comment on New Delhi’s move to summon the US diplomat to the MEA to protest the comment of the US State Department spokesperson. He had also been asked to articulate the US view on what the human rights organisation Amnesty International had described as a “crackdown on opposition”.

“I’m not going to talk about any private diplomatic conversations. But of course what we have said publicly is what I just said from here, that we encourage fair, transparent, timely legal processes,” Miller said, adding, “We don’t think anyone should object to that, and we’ll make the same thing clear privately.”

Kejriwal had been arrested by the ED on March 21 in connection with a money-laundering case related to the excise policy of the government of Delhi.

“In India, legal processes are driven only by the rule of law. Anyone who has a similar ethos, especially fellow democracies, should have no difficulty in appreciating this fact,” Jaiswal, the MEA spokesperson in New Delhi, said, reacting to the comments by Miller. “India is proud of its independent and robust democratic institutions.  We are committed to protecting them from any form of undue external influences.”

New Delhi underscored that mutual respect and understanding formed the foundation of international relations and that the states were expected to be respectful of the sovereignty and internal affairs of others.

Earlier, a comment by Sebastian Fischer, the spokesperson of the federal foreign office of Germany, on the arrest of the AAP leader and the Delhi chief minister had also triggered sharp protests from India. “We assume and expect that the standards relating to the independence of the judiciary and basic democratic principles will also be applied in this case,” Fischer had said, adding that the Delhi Chief Minister had entitled to a fair and impartial trial. “We assume and expect that the standards relating to the independence of the judiciary and basic democratic principles will also be applied in this case,” said Fisher.

Berlin’s deputy envoy to New Delhi, Georg Enzweiler, was summoned to the MEA headquarters, where senior officials had conveyed to him that the remarks were tantamount to interfering with the judicial process and undermining the independence of our judiciary in India.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government changed its tone on Wednesday. “Let me emphasise once again that we – India and Germany – have a great interest in closer cooperation and together in an atmosphere of trust," a spokesperson of the federal foreign office told journalists in Berlin. “The Indian Constitution guarantees basic human rights and freedoms. We share these democratic values with India as a strategic partner.”