By D N Singh
Sometimes it appears as if it has become a season of raids and probes as a precursor to the 2024 polls. Perhaps, this is a new turn of the political climate under the NDA regime where the goal is clear. Which every political rival does justify.
Watching it closely many political observers hold the view that this is the slugfest which had been mulled since long. But, however, use of the probing agencies had never been so rapid and frequent.
To start with, it was the turn of the Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia who is still in the jail post a series of raids which never brought out anything substantially which would have dragged the issue to this far. General election in 2024, in politics where wrong doings and corruption have in a way become institutionalized more or less, law of the land should not fail to check such rots.
Pending what comes out of the case against Sisodia, the next to hit the headlines was the Bihar Dy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav. His house was times when his wife reportedly struggling with a severe pregnancy complication.
That seems to be a bit of overuse of the agency yet after a short raid, nothing incriminating surfaced. Another thing is his growing acceptance coupled with his political intimacy with Nitish Kumar remained another bone of contention for the NDA.
Some opposition leaders have been as if choose-picked among which is Telengana CM’s daughter Kavitha Kalvakuntala now for suspected link with Delhi excise scam in which Sisodia has been the alleged master-mind.
Although the CBI raids on Jharkhand CM, Hemant Soren did not reveal any irrefutable charges and Soren remained in his position.
K Chandrasekhar Rao’s motivational role as an opposition leader to harmonise the anti-BJP parties remained an eyesore.
But, one cannot ignore to read into the peculiar pattern and at such times the opposition leaders seem to be the fall guys. And the timing matters making it hard for them to wriggle out of the mess of embarrassment before the people.
And no body in the system miss that, the corrupt BJP politicians are always exempt from the attention of the central authorities. This is widely accepted as a political reality, not least by BJP leaders themselves.
Even the ones’ from the other parties who jumped to the BJP, all the steps against them seemed halted as in the case of few leaders. For example, the BJP’s Harshvardhan Patil had quipped that he was getting “sound sleep” in the saffron party as there were “no inquiries” conducted against him or his colleagues. Sanjay Patil, a BJP Lok Sabha member openly said that the ED or CBI will not be after him as he is in the BJP.
What do such statements signify?
The dark allusion to his government’s ability to dig up the past was followed soon enough by actions. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were charged with their involvement in transactions relating to a national newspaper.
The Prime Minister was on record in 2017 that he had the Janampatri(horoscope) of all of you alluding the opposition.
Since 2014, there has been a four-fold increase in ED cases against politicians. It is no surprise that under BJP’s rule, 95% of the targets are from the Opposition.
Anyway the list by 2024 is obviously going to be longer.
