India, thousands in Delhi “to defend democracy and the Constitution”

According to Karan Bhati, a 37-year-old lawyer who came for the Delhi rally from Faridabad, in the state of Haryana, the investigations against the leader of opposition are all “politically motivated” and “aim to weaken” theAam Aadmi Party (Aap) of Kejriwal, on the eve of the elections which will begin in just over two weeks. According to the main government party, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Kejriwal’s arrest would instead be nothing more than a new stage in the path of moralization of the country wanted by the prime minister.

Among today’s speakers he also stood out Rahul Gandhithe heir to the most powerful and long-lived political dynasty in Asia and one of the favorite targets of Narendra Modi, who has already defeated him twice, in 2014 and 2019.

Despite not officially being the opposition’s prime ministerial candidate, Gandhi remains one of the most recognizable faces in Indian politics and yesterday he returned to attacking the prime minister. Accusing him of wanting to “decide the outcome of the game before it even begins”, having “his opponents arrested” and “paralyzing the electoral campaign” of the Indian National Congress – his party, as well as the main opposition force – through the freezing of part of his current accounts.

Despite the fact that India has been slipping for years in all the rankings that measure the rate of democracy and freedom of the pressModi remains – according to all polls – the most popular politician in the country and few doubt his chance to collect, next June, a historic third mandate as prime minister.

If the victory proves to be even more overwhelming than those that preceded it, he and the religious party of which he is the leader undisputed they could change the Constitution written by Rajendra Prasad and BR Ambedkar. Political giants who together with figures of the caliber of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the Mahatma Gandhi they allowed the country to first gain independence and then survive the turbulent years that followed.