New Delhi: With elections just around the corner, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Sunday denounced the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “match-fixing”.
Addressing the Opposition INDIA bloc’s ‘Loktantra Bachao (Save Democracy)’ rally at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan, Gandhi said: “When pressure is put on umpires and captain, players are bought off and the match is won, in cricket, it is called match-fixing. We have Lok Sabha polls before us. Who selected the umpires? Before the match started, two players were arrested… Narendra Modi is trying to do match-fixing in these polls”.
The mega rally saw a gamut of opposition leaders. Apart from Rahul, Congress leaders Sonia and Priyanka Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharge, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Peoples’ Democratic Party’s Mehbooba Mufti, NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) chief Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Uddhav Thackeray, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s D. Raja, and Jharkhand Chief Minister Champai Soren attended the meeting.
Kejriwal’s wife Sunita and former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren’s wife Kalpana joined the Opposition leaders on stage, where the former read out a letter from the Delhi chief minister to the Enforcement Directorate. In that letter, Kejriwal called the allegations of corruption against him “politically motivated”.
ThePrint’s national photo editor Praveen Jain and Manisha Mondal were on the ground to cover the rally.
