8 Parties Write To PM After Manish Sisodia’s Arrest, Congress Not On List

New Delhi: 

Eight opposition parties have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging misuse of central investigation agencies to go after them, amid the political war over the arrest of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia.

The Congress has stayed away from the letter signed by opposition leaders, including Chief Ministers K Chandrashekar Rao, Mamata Banerjee, Bhagwant Mann and Arvind Kejriwal. The DMK, Nitish Kumar’s JDU and HD Kumaraswamy’s JDS have also not joined the move.

The Gandhis are being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over alleged money laundering linked to Young Indian’s takeover of Associated Journals Ltd, the company which ran the National Herald newspaper. Both Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi were questioned by the ED last year.

Meanwhile, the AAP slammed the Congress and said, “Congress disappears when national issues are raised”.

“Congress has never stood with the opposition, this has been its history. We have been hearing the BJP’s claim that they will put Rahul Gandhi and Robert Vadra in jail. This is just a war of words. Congress disappears when national issues are raised,” said AAP’s spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj.

The opposition leaders cited the example of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was under the scanner of the CBI and the ED in 2014 and 2015 over the Saradha chit fund scam when he was with the Congress.

Others who have signed the letter are National Conference’s Farooq Abdullah, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, Sena’s Uddav Thackeray, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.

“We hope you would agree that India is still a de