New Delhi: The controversy over the arrest of former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia in alleged excise policy scam gets intensified with nine opposition parties coming along to write a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday.

The letter stated that former Cabinet Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia was arrested “after a long witch-hunt” alleging that there are not “a shred of evidence against him.”

They further added that Sisodia’s arrest would be cited worldwide as an example of political witch-hunt, which confirms that “India’s democratic values stand threatened under an authoritarian BJP regime”.

In the letter, they claimed that there were a maximum number of raids, arrests and interroation against the Opposition leaders while highlighting that the agencies go slow over those accused members who join Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) later.

They mentioned a few names including former TMC leaders Suvendu Adhikari and Mukul Roy who are now at reputed posts in the saffron party while, also naming ex-Congress and current BJP member Himanta Biswa Sarma who is the Chief Minister of Assam.

They highlighted that the number of cases against the Oppoosition rose after 2014 when the BJP came to power in the Centre.

“Be it Lalu Prasad Yadav (Rashtriya Janata Dal), Sanjay Raut (Shiv Sena), Azam Khan (Samajwadi Party), Nawab Malik, Anil Deshmukh (NCP), Abhishek Banerjee (TMC), 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 timings of the cases lodged or arrests made have coincided with elections making it abundantly clear that they were politically motivated,” read the letter.

Nine Opposition leaders including Arvind Kejriwal have written to PM Modi on the arrest of former Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia in the excise policy case. They have stated that the action appears to suggest that "we have transitioned from being a democracy to an autocracy". pic.twitter.com/ohXn3rNuxI

— ANI (@ANI) March 5, 2023

Apart from the central investigative agencies, the letter accused the state Governors of “acting  in violation of the constitutional provisions.”

Referring to the Governors of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Punjab, Telangana and the Lt Governor of Delhi, the parties said, “The offices of the Governors across the country are acting in violation of the constitutional provisions and frequently hindering the governance of the state. They are wilfully undermining democratically elected state governments and choosing instead to obstruct governance as per their whims and fancies.”

“In a democracy, the will of the people is supreme. The mandate given by the people should be respected even if it was in favour of a party whose ideology was contrary to yours,” read the letter.

Congress Missing   

Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) chief Chandrasekhar Rao, Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) chief Farooq Abdullah, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, AAP leader Bhagwat Mann, Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) Tejashwi Yadav and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav were those who undersigned the letter.

Among these names, the Indian National Congress (INC) was missing as it seems to stay away from the letter.