Dear Express Reader,

Last Sunday, Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia was arrested by the CBI over alleged irregularities in the Arvind Kejriwal government's subsequently-scrapped excise policy. Sisodia's arrest came only days after the brief arrest of Congress leader and its Media and Publicity Department chairman Pawan Khera after he was deboarded from a Raipur-bound flight - police from the distant state of Assam travelled all the way to Delhi on the complaint of someone who claimed to be offended by a remark Khera had earlier made on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

On Wednesday, the Centre for Policy Research, one of India's leading public policy think tanks said it had been informed by the Ministry of Home Affairs that its registration under the FCRA was "suspended for a period of 180 days". The freeze on foreign funding came weeks after the CPR received a show-cause notice by the Income Tax Department asking why the registration granting it tax exemption should not be cancelled. 

The I-T Department's threat to CPR follows its knock on the doors of the BBC's offices in Mumbai and Delhi last month on the heels of the release of the British broadcaster's documentary on the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat on the watch of then Chief Minister Modi.       

On Thursday, results of elections in three states of the Northeast confirmed the BJP spread into a region where less than a decade ago it did not have a leg to stand on.

Three days, three separate events, and a curiosity: Could they be connected? 

There is evidently a pattern that links Sisodia's arrest to the CPR's targeting - as we wrote in our editorial on the action against CPR: "Its current predicament is part of a larger dismal pattern - a political establishment that weaponises the rule-book's small print to shrink spaces for free expression." Despite the differences in the specific situations and contexts, the action against CPR and BBC and the arrests of Khera and Sisodia all frame the ire, and firepower, of the ruling party against opponents and critics.    

While Khera's arrest was clearly unwarranted, for instance, the facts of the case against Sisodia are still unclear. Yet, what is apparent in both matters is the uncanny coincidence between the government's political peeves and the arrests and I-T raids or "surveys". 

This coincidence and convergence has grown more blatant than before. As our editorial on Sisodia's arrest pointed out: "… as an investigation by this paper showed in September last year, the casebook of the CBI, which had infamously earned the label of 'caged parrot', reveals a sharp spike in the number of Opposition politicians and their close relatives under its scanner since 2014. Of the 124 prominent politicians who had been under CBI probe since that year, as many as 118 are from the Opposition - a staggering 95 per cent, up from 60 per cent during the UPA years."

So, the pattern shared by the first two events of last week, the arrest of Sisodia and action against CPR, is clear. But can any dots be joined between them and the third - the BJP's robust tally on the Northeast scoreboard?

Could it be that the Narendra Modi-led BJP's continuing electoral successes mean that its government's ruthless targeting of political opponents and critics, in some sense, has the imprimatur of the people's mandate? That the people condone, or actually vote for, a state that is unforgiving, and vindictive really?

It's a question more easily posed than answered. For one, the people's vote for the BJP is made of a number of factors. The presence and salience of one, and not the other, in the election campaign is also a matter of political mobilisation. The government's weaponisation of the rule-book and central agencies to selectively target those who speak out against it is not an election issue by itself necessarily - it has to be framed as one.  

Eight Opposition parties (conspicuously excluding Congress) have arguably made a move towards this end - they have written a letter to the PM protesting the misuse of central agencies against the government's political opponents. 

"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," these Opposition leaders have said. 

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is a signatory to the letter. Her criticism of the BJP's targeting of its opponents has been immediately and considerably undermined by the arrest by Kolkata Police on Saturday of West Bengal Congress spokesperson Koustav Bagchi for remarks he allegedly made against Banerjee.

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann is a signatory too and there is more than one question mark against his own credibility on this matter too. On Saturday, again, editor-in-chief of the Ajit Group of publications in Punjab, Barjinder Singh, wrote to Governor Banwari Lal Purohit saying that the Mann government is trying to "teach a lesson" to the paper for its coverage. Among other things, government advertisements have dried up, he says, and the Group's reporters and cameramen have been denied access to the assembly in the present Budget Session.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's name is reportedly not on the list of signatories, but he would undoubtedly endorse its message. And yet, in Kerala on Sunday, two days after members of the CPM's student wing, SFI, allegedly forced their way into the Kozhikode office of Malayalam channel Asianet News, Kerala Police conducted an intimidatory "search" of its premises. 

The thin-skinned and heavy-handed state is ubiquitous. That doesn't exonerate the BJP, of course. It is also true that the BJP has taken both the thin-skinnedness and heavy-handedness to a new high, or low. But it might help explain why, so far, it seems to be getting away with it.

Till next week,

Vandita