SRINAGAR: Several workers of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) were detained in Srinagar and Jammu on Friday as they tried to take out a protest march against the arrest of their party’s national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. In Srinagar, scores of AAP workers assembled near the Press Enclave to protest against Kejriwal’s arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Delhi on Thursday night. As soon as the party members tried to take out the march, police dispersed them and detained a few protestors, officials said. Speaking to reporters, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Nawab Nasir said Kejriwal’s arrest was against the democratic norms. “This is a fight for democracy and we will ultimately win this,” he said. Nasir added that Kejriwal is an ideology which cannot be arrested. “We want to tell (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi that his dictatorship will not work. Kejriwal is an idea, an ideology. You can arrest him but you cannot arrest his ideas,” the AAP leader said before being whisked by police. Many AAP workers were also detained in Jammu as they tried to march towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters to stage a protest. Over 200 AAP workers and leaders took out a protest march towards the BJP headquarters in Trikuta Nagar in Jammu. Carrying AAP flags, they raised anti-BJP and anti-government slogans. However, the police did not allow them to move towards the BJP office and detained several workers midway. “We are protesting against the arrest of our leader Arvind Kejriwal. We are with him. We will fight for him on the streets of India,” AAP leader Surinder Singh Shringari told reporters before being detained by the police. Shringari added that the BJP-led Centre is trying to “murder democracy” and “silence the voice of opposition due to fear of defeat”. He added that the BJP is afraid of the popularity of Kejriwal and his party and, therefore, he has been arrested just weeks before the elections. The ED has arrested Kejriwal in a money laundering case linked to alleged irregularities in the scrapped Delhi excise policy 2021-22.
