Hope people are able to vote freely in India: UN official

A SPOKESPERSON for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he hopes that in India people's "political and civil rights are protected" and everyone can vote freely during the forthcoming general elections that will kick off from April 19.

Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric made these remarks on Thursday (28) while he was responding to a question on the “political unrest” in India ahead of the upcoming national elections in the wake of the arrest of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and the freezing of the opposition Congress party's bank accounts.

“What we very much hope that in India, as in any country that is having elections, that everyone's rights are protected, including political and civil rights, and everyone is able to vote in an atmosphere that is free and fair,” Dujarric said at the daily press briefing.

The response from the United Nations comes a day after the US also reacted to a similar question on Kejriwal's arrest and freezing of the Congress party's bank accounts.

On Wednesday, hours after India summoned a senior US diplomat to protest remarks on Kejriwal's arrest, Washington reiterated that it encourages fair, transparent, timely legal processes.

On the US diplomat being summoned in Delhi, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said “I'm not going to talk about any private diplomatic conversations. But of course what we have said publicly is what I just said from here, that we encourage fair, transparent, timely legal processes. We don't think anyone should object to that, and we'll make the same thing clear privately.”

Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials summoned Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Gloria Berbena to their office in South Block in the Indian capital. The meeting lasted for more than 30 minutes.

India on Thursday said the US State Department's recent remarks on the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are "unwarranted" and asserted the country is "proud of its independent and robust democratic institutions" and committed to protect them from any form of undue external influences.

Any "external imputation" on India's electoral and legal processes is "completely unacceptable", MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in New Delhi during his weekly press briefing.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said in a statement that India took strong objection to the remarks of the Spokesperson of the US State Department about certain legal proceedings in India.

The Enforcement Directorate has arrested Kejriwal in a money laundering case linked to the excise policy 'scam'. The case pertains to alleged corruption and money laundering in formulating and executing the Delhi government's excise policy for 2021-22 which was later scrapped. (PTI)