Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao's brain behind opposition letter bomb to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Manish Sisodia's arrest

HYDERABAD: A week after the arrest of former Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia by CBI, at least nine leaders of eight political parties on Sunday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing the BJP-led Centre of misusing central investigating agencies and Raj Bhavans to launch a witch-hunt against Opposition leaders. The move, as per top sources, was the brainchild of Telangana chief minister and BRS supremo, K Chandrasekhar Rao, one of the sharpest critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, the composition of signatories to the missive to Modi reflects an emerging non-Congress, anti-BJP front with the top Congressmen and leaders allied to the grand old party missing in the columns. KCR's daughter and MLC K Kavitha has been named in the ED chargesheet on the Delhi liquor policy scam.
"Dear Pradhan Mantri Ji, we hope you would agree that India is still a democratic country. The blatant misuse of central agencies against opposition members appears to suggest that we have transitioned from a democracy to an autocracy," the leaders wrote.
Those who signed on the letter include BRS president and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, Farooq Abdullah (JKNC) West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar of NCP, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal (AAP), Uddhav Thackeray of Shiv Sena-UBT, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party and Tejashwi Yadav of RJD.

In a scathing letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, leaders of eight political parties, including BRS president and Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal (AAP), among others, accused the Centre of 'blatant misuse' of central investigating agencies and Raj Bhavans to hound Opposition leaders.
Though Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are being investigated by ED in the National Herald case, the Congress imprint was absent. So was the DMK, Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and HD Kumaraswamy's JDS - a pointer to their proximity to the Congress. Also, Mamata-led Trinamool Congress lost to Congress in the recent by-election. Rahul Gandhi, during his Bharat Jodo Yatra in Telangana, had categorically said "Congress cannot be friends with BRS, a party which reeks of corruption".
In the letter, Opposition leaders wrote "After a long witch-hunt, former Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia was arrested by CBI without a shred of evidence. The allegations against Sisodia are baseless and smack of a political conspiracy. His arrest has enraged the country and will be cited worldwide as an example of a political witch-hunt and further confirm what the world was suspecting that India's democratic values stand threatened under an authoritarian BJP regime."
Opposition leaders went on to write to PM Narendra Modi that maximum number of key politicians arrested, raided or interrogated by probe agencies since 2014 hailed from Opposition parties. "Investigation agencies go slow on cases against Opposition politicians, who join BJP. Former Congress member and current Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, former TMC leaders Suvendu Adhikari, Mukul Roy and Narayan Rane of Maharashtra are cases in point," they wrote.
"Since BJP came to power in 2014, there has been a marked rise in raids conducted, cases lodged against and arrest of Opposition leaders, including Lalu Prasad Yadav (Rashtriya Janata Dal), Sanjay Raut (Shiv Sena), Azam Khan (Samajwadi Party), Nawab Malik, Anil Deshmukh (NCP), Abhishek Banerjee (TMC). The central agencies have often sparked suspicion that they were working as extended wings of the ruling dispensation at the Centre. In many such cases, the timing of cases and arrests coincided with elections, making it abundantly clear they were politically motivated and aimed at eliminating the opposition.
"There's yet another front on which a war is being waged against our country's federalism. The offices of Governors across the country are acting in violation of constitutional provisions and frequently hindering the governance. They are wilfully undermining democratically elected state governments and choosing instead to obstruct governance as per whims and fancies. Be it the Governor of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Punjab, Telangana or the Lt Governor of Delhi, they have become the face of a widening rift between the Centre and states run by non-BJP governments. This threatens the spirit of federalism, which states continue to nurture in spite of a lack of expression by the Centre. As a result, people of our country have now begun to question the role of the Governors in Indian democracy.
"The misuse of central agencies and constitutional offices like that of the Governor to settle scores outside of the electoral battlefield is strongly condemnable as it does not bode well for our democracy.," the leaders wrote.