Chandigarh: A day after assuming charge as Punjab chief minister on March 16, Bhagwant Mann had claimed that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government would not indulge in political vendetta. Barely a month later, this claim has come under question with several cases registered against political opponents.
The most recent example is the case registered against Arvind Kejriwal’s old adversaries – Kumar Vishwas and Alka Lamba – for “inflammatory statements” made against the Delhi chief minister in February, just before Punjab’s assembly elections.
The case against Vishwas and Lamba was registered in Rupnagar district’s Sadar police station on April 12, based on the complaint of an AAP worker. The matter came to light when a team of police officers served notices to the duo at their homes in Delhi on Wednesday, April 20 to join the investigation.
Both Lamba and Vishwas were Kejriwal’s colleagues in AAP before they fell out and went their separate ways. While Lamba joined the Congress in 2019, Vishwas developed a close association with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), although officially he is not a member.
Giving details of the FIR, Sandeep Garg, Rupnagar district senior superintendent of police (SSP), told The Wire that the case was registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code such as provocation, promoting enmity, rioting and criminal conspiracy, apart from Section 125 (promoting enmity between classes in connection with election) of the Representation of People Act.
According to the officer, the complainant had reported that when he travelled to villages along with AAP supporters for grievance redressal, some unknown masked men stopped them and called them Khalistanis. These incidents have occurred regularly, the complainant said.
While the SSP did not share the name of the complainant or when these alleged incidents occurred, the complaint says they started after Vishwas gave “inflammatory statements” against Kejriwal on news channels and social media platforms, linking AAP with separatist elements. As a result of these statements and videos, the peaceful atmosphere of the state of Punjab is likely to be disturbed, the complaint says.
“As a part of the investigation, notice has been served upon Kumar Vishwas to produce whatever evidence he has to support his allegations. The matter is being investigated as per facts and law,” said Garg.
When the police reached Vishwas’ Delhi residence to serve him the notice, he was apparently not home. While Garg was quoted by Hindustan Times as saying that Vishwas will be arrested if he does not join the probe within 48 hours, the police officer told The Wire that would not be the case.
Garg later told The Wire that the said statement is untrue. “Both Lamba and Kumar Vishwas have been summoned for questioning on April 26,” he said.
Lamba on Wednesday shared the notice served upon her on her Twitter handle, which claimed that during the investigation, there are reasonable grounds to question her in this matter and asked her to appear before a special investigative team at 10 am on April 26, 2022.
SSP Garg told The Wire that Lamba had made similar allegations and the police have asked her to produce evidence.
What were Vishwas’s exact words then?
In a video three days before Punjab voted, Vishwas, a founder member of AAP, claimed, “One day, he (Kejriwal) told me he would either become CM (of Punjab) or first PM of an independent nation (Khalistan)… he wants power at any cost.”
AAP had rubbished the claims. Senior party leader Raghav Chadha called the comments “malicious, unfounded, fabricated and inflammatory”.
In response, Kumar Vishwas went on to say that Kejriwal has two “specialities”. The first is “lying with confidence” and the second is “playing the victim card”, that everybody is ganging up against him. “With these two tricks, once he fooled the country, then he fooled his aides,” Vishwas said.
“Nobody called you a terrorist. You answer: whether sympathisers of terrorist organisations used to come to your place or not before the election,” Vishwas said.
Two days after his statement, the BJP government at the Centre gave him Y security with CRPF cover, saying there was a threat to his life.
The dust appeared to have settled down on the Kejriwal-Kumar Vishwas fight after AAP won Punjab with a huge mandate in the March 10 verdict and the party promised to be forward thinking in its policies and governance.
Traditionally, parties in Punjab have registering cases against each other after gaining power.
The previous Congress government appointed a commission to study cases of political vendetta against Congress workers during the previous Shiromani Akali Dali (SAD)-BJP regime. Later, it claimed that the commission’s report said more than 400 Congress workers were wrongly prosecuted during that time.
AAP’s Punjab spokesperson Malvinder Kang told The Wire that the Bhagwant Mann government has no intention of indulging in political vendetta. In fact, they want to depoliticise the police and improve state governance, he said.
He said the state police have been pursuing cases against Kumar Vishwas and Alka Lamba based on complaints received and the AAP government has no role in it.
File image of Alka Lamba when she was a member of AAP. Photo: PTI
Not a solitary case
But the police case against Lamba and Vishwas is not the only example of alleged political vendetta.
Since the AAP government was formed in Punjab, state police have registered as many as three cases against BJP leaders, all from outside the state.
On March 17, a day after Mann was sworn in as chief minister, the police had booked an “unknown” user of a Twitter handle that had alleged the CM’s Office had removed a portrait of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The Twitter handle belonged to the BJP leader from Maharashtra, Priti Gandhi.
Later, a case was registered against Gandhi under multiple offences including Sections 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) at the Cyber Crime Police Station, Mohali, on the complaint of Prabhjot Kaur, general secretary of AAP’s Mohali district unit.
A few days later, the Punjab Police registered a case against the Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, who had been attacking Kejriwal over his remarks on the movie, The Kashmir Files.
Earlier this month, the Delhi BJP’s media cell head Naveen Kumar Jindal was named in a case in Mohali on the complaint of AAP’s legal cell for allegedly sharing on his Twitter handle a “doctored video clip” of Kejriwal.
Opposition reacts
Former Punjab Congress chief Navjot Sidhu in a tweet took a potshot at AAP and said that the Punjab government is acting like “Arvind Kejriwal’s puppet”. The case against Vishwas and Lamba shows that the police is “being used to silence [Kejriwal’s] critics”, he said, adding that the Congress stands firmly with Lamba.
Congress MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira in a tweet described the case as “pure intimidation” and “trampling of our fundamental right to speech”.
In a statement, SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal condemned the Punjab police’s actions. “Bhagwant Mann should not allow misuse of the Punjab Police on the directions of the Delhi chief minister. We are witnessing cases being registered against all those who have stood up to AAP and the latest victim is Kumar Vishwas. Punjabis did not give power to AAP to enable it to settle its political scores. The mandate was to provide transparent, persecution free governance as well as fulfill all the promises made to the people,” Badal said.
Meanwhile, BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh alleged that the AAP government is using the state police to settle political scores.
File photo of Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann flash the victory sign, as the party heads to a landslide victory in Punjab Assembly elections. Photo: PTI
Person in Delhi’ will betray you too: Vishwas to Mann
Meanwhile, Vishwas tweeted a photo of the Punjab Police team at his residence on the morning of April 20. He said he had been the person to convince Mann to join AAP. He then warned Mann, saying. “You are now giving Punjab’s power to the person sitting in Delhi. One day, he will betray Punjab and you. The country should remember my warning.”
Lamba tweeted to say she will not get bogged down by these threats. “This is why AAP wanted to have control over the police in Delhi,” she said in a post.
