The recent arrest of Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister of the province that envelops national capital New Delhi, is causing a stir in India, coming as it did just before the general election in April. Police and paramilitaries cordoned off Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence on March 26 as street protests flared.

It has attracted attention abroad too. A German foreign ministry spokesman irritated New Delhi last week when he said Berlin assumes and expects that “the standards relating to the independence of the judiciary and fundamental democratic principles will apply” in the case.

Mr Kejriwal was picked up from home on March 21 after he ignored repeated summonses to appear before the Indian Enforcement Directorate (ED), which works to combat money laundering.

By seeking to nail the popular 55-year-old Mr Kejriwal on corruption charges at a time when his oratorical skills are in huge demand with the opposition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has taken a gamble. The personal embarrassment and inconvenience delivered to Mr Kejriwal may work in its favour, but it also risks alienating voters by putting a martyr’s halo on the opposition politician. 

Mr Modi also risks signalling nervousness that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not as secure about its chances of retaining power as it would like the world to believe.

The ED’s allegations against Mr Kejriwal are not trivial. It alleges that a corporate group passed bribes to his AAP or Aam Aadmi Party (Common Man’s Party) for favourable liquor licensing policies in a now-scrapped scheme, funds which then were used to fund the campaign for state polls in the western coastal province of Goa. Mr Kejriwal was accused of being “intrinsically involved” in the scheme.

People I reached in New Delhi expect the politically canny Mr Kejriwal to tap into a vein of public sympathy from the arrest. Displaying his sense of timing, AAP has already put out word that his first concern, even from his remand cell, was to ensure Delhi’s 20 million residents will not be short of water in the approaching dry months.

Viewed from Toa Payoh where these words are written, and having observed Mr Kejriwal at close quarters when I was posted in New Delhi more than a decade ago, his predicament – it is rare for a sitting chief minister to be arrested – triggers a tad more curiosity than it might have if any other Asian politician from a not-too-proximate neighbour were placed in similar circumstances.  

Here’s why.

In May, 2021, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr Kejriwal, as the Delhi chief minister, issued a startling call to stop flights from Singapore, alleging that a “Singapore strain” of the virus that was particularly severe in children, had arrived in India. 

It was nonsense; no such strain existed. 

What’s more, Singapore had done what it could to be a logistics hub and oxygen provider for India at a time when New Delhi was still gathering up its response to what turned out to be a national calamity.

Mr Kejriwal was merely being himself – opportunistically grabbing the spotlight – even at the risk of ruffling a largely wrinkle-free bilateral relationship. 

Sure enough, the outburst prompted Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to call in the Indian envoy to Singapore, although it tried to soften the diplomatic encounter by labelling it a “meeting to express concerns”. 

Subsequently, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar issued a statement saying Mr Kejriwal “does not speak for India”, before going on to note that “irresponsible statements can damage longstanding relationships”.

Mr Kejriwal was once considered a true change-agent. There was a time when many overseas Indians, eager to see improvement in the home country, went about raising funds for his movement. 

But more than a decade after his party was founded in 2012, the gloss has gone off. He has begun to look like any other politician with unbridled ambition.

On trips to southern India, for instance, this writer often used to wonder at the advertisements touting the achievements of the Delhi state government that would appear in newspapers there, far away from Delhi. 

Mr Kejriwal, it was clear, was going about building a national base. 

Sure enough, reports citing data extracted through India’s Right to Information Act – a facility that Mr Kejriwal as a private citizen once effectively used in his anti-corruption fight that brought him national attention – revealed that the Delhi government’s ad spending went up 4,200 percent between 2012 and 2022 to touch 4.9 billion rupees (S$79 million).

In 2023, both the BJP and the Congress – the latter with which he is currently aligned to contest the seven parliamentary seats from the territory – rounded on him for allegedly reneging on promises that he would, as chief minister, eschew the trappings of power such as expensive government bungalows and the red beacon atop government vehicles that denotes power and authority. The expenses for refurbishing Mr Kejriwal’s official bungalow had reportedly exceeded the sanctioned 400 million rupees. AAP has denied the allegations.

Mr Kejriwal, a tax bureaucrat before he left government to immerse himself in the India Against Corruption movement, used to say that the movement had no intention to enter direct politics. But he went on to co-found the Aam Aadmi Party and eventually emerge as Delhi’s chief minister.

In 2011, as his party feasted on what once was the Congress’ vote bank in Delhi, he would generally avoid criticism of the BJP and Mr Modi. But later, his ambition widened; in the 2014 parliamentary polls, he contested directly against Mr Modi in the city of Varanasi, winning about 209,000 votes against the 581,000 scored by Mr Modi.

Today, AAP controls Punjab state, aside from Delhi. And it has pockets of influence elsewhere. 

Like Mr Modi at the national level, Mr Kejriwal touts his own record; for instance, his stint as chief minister of Delhi has seen marked improvements in the functioning of government-run schools.

As for public positioning, he has placed himself diametrically opposite the prime minister. If Mr Modi is focused on building the cake, Mr Kejriwal’s emphasis seems to be on distributing it. While Mr Modi is natty, Mr Kejriwal presents an everyman facade, marked in the winter months, particularly, with a trademark woollen scarf around his neck. 

And just as Mr Modi has done with the BJP, Mr Kejriwal has taken full control of his party, sidelining potential challengers.

Being 24x7 politicians both, the two even seem to have a grudging mutual respect. 

In 2015, Mr Modi advised Mr Kejriwal to consult the head of a yoga institute in Bangalore for his persistent cough and high blood sugar. Mr Kejriwal did not take the specific advice, but did check into another health farm in the city for treatment.

The big question is whether Mr Modi has miscalculated by allowing Mr Kejriwal’s arrest to proceed. 

It is common wisdom that Mr Modi looks best when ranged in the public mind against Mr Rahul Gandhi of the Congress, who the BJP likes to portray as a “pappu”, or genial dunce.

Mr Kejriwal on the other hand is both quick-witted, and sharp-tongued.

And recent days have helped him take the spotlight away from Mr Gandhi, who has painstakingly improved his public image these past 18 months through two “yatras” – journeys from the southern tip of India to Kashmir in the north and recently, a trip from troubled Manipur in the north-east to the prosperous coastal province of Maharashtra in the west. Those journeys have often attracted large crowds. 

It wouldn’t be the first time Mr Kejriwal has gained from another leader’s hard work; during his days in the India Against Corruption movement, he had, without himself fasting a single day because of his diabetes, succeeding in imprinting himself on the public mind by closely aligning with the fasting strike led by social reformer Anna Hazare, the principal figure of the movement.

Today, the opposition India bloc has substantially closed ranks on the Kejriwal issue, and come out in support. It is not impossible that some of the momentum gathered by Mr Gandhi could pass to Mr Kejriwal. 

That is the danger for the BJP and Mr Modi.