December 15, 2015

MODI RIVAL DENOUNCES RAID AT DELHI STATE GOVERNMENT HEADQUARTERS

[The latest instance of his hostility to Mr. Modi’s administration came Tuesday after Devpreet Singh, the spokeswoman for the Central Bureau of Investigation, said that federal investigators had raided the office of a principal secretary in the Delhi government over allegations of corruption against the bureaucrat.]

By Nida Najar
Police officers at the state government headquarters for Delhi on Tuesday, after the office of a principal secretary 
was raided in a corruption investigation. Credit Prakash Singh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
NEW DELHI A longtime political rivalry in India heated up on Tuesday when federal officials raided the offices of the Delhi State government and the state’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, reacted with fury, calling Prime MinisterNarendra Modi a coward and a psychopath.

Mr. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party swept into power in Delhi in February after winning an overwhelming majority of seats in the state assembly on an anticorruption platform, a striking blow to the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Mr. Modi.

Mr. Kejriwal has since pressed for more control over the levers of power in the capital, including oversight of the police, which are held by the central government.

The latest instance of his hostility to Mr. Modi’s administration came Tuesday after Devpreet Singh, the spokeswoman for the Central Bureau of Investigation, said that federal investigators had raided the office of a principal secretary in the Delhi government over allegations of corruption against the bureaucrat.

Their search was continuing in the early afternoon, and teams were also inspecting the home of the principal secretary, Rajendra Kumar, according to the Press Trust of India, a news agency.

But Mr. Kejriwal said on Twitter that the investigators had raided his office as well as Mr. Kumar’s and “looked into” files and that their search was motivated by Mr. Modi.
 “When Modi cudn’t handle me politically, he resorts to this cowardice,” Mr. Kejriwal said on Twitter, calling Mr. Modi “a coward and a psycopath.”

Ms. Singh denied that Mr. Kejriwal’s office had been raided.

The Central Bureau of Investigation opened a case of criminal conspiracy and criminal misconduct against Mr. Kumar on Monday. He is suspected of helping to award government contracts to a favored company while he was working in various positions with the Delhi government, from 2007 to 2014, Ms. Singh said.

In the past, the Central Bureau of Investigation has been accused of bending to political interests. In 2013, when the Indian National Congress party was in power, the Supreme Court said that the agency was “a caged parrot” speaking in its “master’s voice” and added that it “must know how to stand up against all pulls and pressures by government and its officials.”

In comments to reporters, Venkaiah Naidu, the minister of urban development for the central government, denied that the agency’s searches on Tuesday had been politically motivated.

“The C.B.I. do not function under the government — gone are the days of the Congress party” when the agency’s prerogatives could be misused, he said. “Today the C.B.I. is an independent organization. The governments do not interfere at all.”