A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said the UN “hopes” that in India and any country that is having elections, people’s “political and civil rights” are “protected” and everyone is able to vote in a “free and fair” atmosphere.
“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,” Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric said at the daily press briefing on Thursday.
Dujarric made these remarks 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.
The response from the United Nations comes a day after the US also reacted to a similar question regarding Kejriwal’s arrest and the freezing of the Congress party’s bank accounts.
On the US diplomat being summoned in Delhi, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller, said, “We continue to follow these actions closely, including the arrest of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. We are also aware of the Congress party’s allegations that tax authorities have frozen some of their bank accounts in a manner that will make it challenging to effectively campaign in the upcoming elections. And we encourage fair, transparent and timely legal processes for each of these issues.”
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials summoned Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Gloria Berbena to their office in South Block in New Delhi.
On Thursday, India 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.
