People’s vote and voice cannot be taken away easily: Prabir Purkayastha

The people’s sense of their vote, their voice, and democracy is not something that can be taken away from them easily, journalist and activist Prabir Purkayastha has said.

He was speaking at a seminar on ‘Political persecution by Central agencies’ that was organised by the AKG Centre for Research and Studies here on Wednesday.

Mr. Purkayastha said the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre, which was using government agencies to further its objectives, was increasingly becoming alienated from the people. The people, from their struggles against the British as part of the national movement and even after Independence, had understood the value of their rights, including the right to vote. These were not something they would give up without a struggle, even though it could take time.

Mr. Purkayastha, founder of the portal Newsclick who spent seven months in jail over allegations of foreign funding, said both the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act required one to establish one’s innocence. However, most cases registered under these did not reach anywhere since their intention was to prevent one from engaging in normal activities. So, one ended up fighting not only cases but also a media witchhunt engineered by the BJP government.

Referring to his incarceration during Emergency in 1975, he said his generation faced their Emergency. Did this generation have to face this Emergency in order to reassert values of democracy, equality, and liberty, he asked.

Aam Aadmi Party leader and former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, said the entire country was being forced to live in the shadow of the Enforcement Directorate. The ED, Mr. Sisodia said, was not enforcing any law. The only person it was doing a service for was Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Central agencies such as the ED or the CBI, he said, were being used to suppress opposition. Not only political opponents but business persons were also being harassed. The ED machinery was used to milk business persons, he said.

Mr. Sisodia went on to allege that the Congress was hand-in glove with the BJP in misuse of the ED across the country. “Congress files frivolous cases and the BJP acts upon them,” he said referring to his “painful” arrest based on a Congress MP’s complaint.

He also spoke about the repeated pressure to join the BJP to make the cases against him go away. However, the judiciary had held that the case could not be considered for trial.

Mr. Sisodia who expressed his support for the CPI(M) and what Kerala was “facing” said he wanted to warn the people that the BJP was trying to come to power here using the Election Commission of India and the ED. If it did, it would reverse everything done for the people of the State, as had happened in Delhi, he said.

He also expressed thanks for the support he was getting from Keralam for his “fight against atrocities of the ED and the BJP.”

CPI(M) State secretary M.V. Govindan also spoke.