The Congress has said the arrest of Karnataka trouble-shooter D.K. Shivakumar was a clear case of political vendetta as the BJP was selectively hunting down strong leaders to kill the Opposition.

The Congress general secretary in charge of organisation, K.C. Venugopal, who also looks after the Karnataka unit of the party, said in a statement: “After P. Chidambaram, yet another leader has been dubiously, vengefully, selectively targeted for standing up against the politics of horse-trading and subversion of the mandate.”

The statement added: “In doing so, an extremely worrisome and wrong trend has been set by the Modi government to harass, hunt down and neutralise political opponents with fabricated allegations.

“Shivakumar being a strong leader was always a target of the BJP. Although there are well-proven cases of black money transactions and money laundering during the political horse-trading in Karnataka by BJP leaders, the central investigating agencies have not registered any cases against them.”

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted on Wednesday: “The arrest of D.K. Shivakumar is another example of the vendetta politics unleashed by the Govt, using agencies like the ED/CBI & a pliant media to selectively target individuals.”

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said at a media conference: “The arrest of Shivakumar is but the latest in a series of continuing political vendetta. His only crime was that he provided protection to those Congress MLAs of Gujarat who were being poached by the NDA-BJP during the Rajya Sabha election (of Ahmed Patel). The Modi government has targeted several Opposition leaders but failed to secure a single conviction from the courts in the past five years.”

The Congress leader claimed that the abnormal rise in vendetta politics was also aimed at diverting national attention from the abysmal failures of the government on every front.

“If there are three words in the dictionary that characterise these last 96 days, they are tyranny, chaos and anarchy.”

Referring to the economic crisis, Tewari said: “Unlike China, India is essentially a private economy and except for government expenditure and government investment, investors have absolutely no confidence and no faith left in the Indian economy.”

Tewari also referred to the situation in Kashmir. “There has been a complete shutdown for a month. If the situation is normal, why is there such a lockdown, why are Opposition leaders not allowed to enter the state, why are state leaders in detention? What about civil rights, why is communication down? It is absolutely a man-made disaster with coercion and insensitivity,” he said.

On the NRC, he said: “In Assam, more than 19 lakh people have been rendered stateless. Does the government of India have a plan? And to cover up this complete breakdown of governance, you see endless persecution of Opposition leaders.”