New Delhi: Within 48 hours of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s shock exit from the INDIA bloc, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) swooped down on a number of opposition leaders, creating an environment of political turmoil across the country.
On Monday (January 29), the ED visited Jharkhand chief minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Hemant Soren at his New Delhi residence, where he was not present. The ED claims to have seized Rs 36 lakh in cash, a BMW car which the agency claims to be registered under a benami name, and allegedly a few “incriminating documents” in its investigation of a money laundering case. The search went on for over 13 hours. Soren, who has received notices from the ED before and termed those part of political vendetta by the BJP-led Union government, wrote to the ED on Tuesday that he will record his statement with the agency on January 31 at his residence.
Soren is the fourth opposition chief minister to come under the scanner of the central investigation agency. Earlier, former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and his associates were accused by the ED of being involved in an illegal online betting case. Baghel was named by the ED days ahead of the state’s assembly polls, which allowed the BJP to carry out a political campaign against the chief minister’s alleged corruption. Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and his son and former deputy chief minister of Bihar Tejashwi Yadav have also been implicated in an alleged “land for jobs” scam.
Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal, too, has been served multiple notices by the ED in the excise policy case, in which his deputy Manish Sisodia and party MP Sanjay Singh have already been arrested. Satyendra Jain, another AAP minister in Delhi, has been in prison for around two years. Speculations are rife that Kejriwal may soon be arrested for refusing to present himself for questioning, as the chief minister has maintained that the questioning was politically motivated and a ploy to arrest him to prevent him from campaigning during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
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Like one has seen in the past, the BJP used the raid against Soren to launch a shrill campaign against the Jharkhand chief minister. Immediately after the raids in New Delhi, when Soren wasn’t present, the BJP put up a ‘missing person’s’ poster containing Soren’s picture and a reward of Rs 11,000 for the person who finds him, and claimed that he had gone “missing”, in what was an attempt to claim that Soren had been absconding. However, Soren emerged in the afternoon and attended a meeting with his party legislators. Soren claimed that he had been preoccupied with prior scheduled official engagements and preparations for the state budget, and accused the ED of conducting raids out of “malice” and to further the BJP’s “political agenda” of disrupting the functioning of the state government.
On Monday, even RJD chief Lalu Prasad, who is severely ill, was called for questioning by the ED in a case that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had first registered in May 2022 as a “land-for-jobs” scam. The CBI has named Lalu Prasad, his wife and former chief minister Rabri Devi, and their son Tejashwi Yadav and two daughters Misa Bharti and Hema Yadav, along with 12 others. The charges pertain to taking alleged land bribes in exchange for Group D jobs given by the Union railway ministry when Lalu was the railway minister, between 2004 to 2009. Incidentally, Prasad’s son Tejashwi was a teenager back then. One of Prasad’s daughters, Rajya Sabha MP Misa Bharti, accompanied her father to the ED office, and said that her family was being “unnecessarily harassed” although it has categorically said that it was ready to cooperate in the investigation.
A day after his father was questioned, Tejashwi was called by the ED and questioned for over eight hours in the same case, amidst calls by opposition leaders that the BJP was “misusing” the agencies for its own political gains. After coming out of the ED’s office, his supporters rallied behind him, in what appeared to be a show of strength. Responding to the ED’s questioning at the ED office, party MP Manoj Kumar Jha took a dig at the agency, “It’s not ED office, it’s BJP office where Tejashwi Yadav has come. When elections come, opposition parties’ leaders are summoned here.”
Earlier this month, when the supporters of a Trinamool Congress leader, Sheikh Shahjahan, attacked ED officials when they had come to search the leader’s premises in connection with one alleged Public Distribution Scheme scam, the BJP turned it into a communal issue by demonising the Muslim community and accusing the TMC for “appeasing” the minority community. However, on January 24, the ED officials successfully carried out a raid at his house in North 24 Parganas district. Another TMC minister, Jyoti Priya Mallick, has already been arrested by the central agency in October 2023 in connection to the same case.
Several other opposition leaders are under the scanner of the central agencies, the latest being former Congress minister in Rajasthan Mahesh Joshi in the alleged Jal Jeevan Mission scam, associates of a few Congress leaders in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh in an alleged Haryana Urban Development Authority scam, and several local opposition leaders in southern states.
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Such alacrity against opposition leaders contrasts that with ED’s lack of any initiative in pursuing similar cases of alleged financial fraud against BJP chief minister of Assam Himanta Biswa Sarma or deputy chief minister of Maharashtra Ajit Pawar, against whom allegations of corruption were being vigorously followed up before he joined ranks with the BJP. Old cases like Vyapam during the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government in Madhya Pradesh have also been put in cold storage. The same is the case of multiple small and big cases of corruption during the BJP rule in Karnataka under chief ministers B.S. Yediyurappa and B.S. Bommai when many of their ministers faced allegations of financial irregularities.
The ED’s raids against the opposition, however, have served the BJP readymade campaigns to target the opposition and advance its own anti-corruption plank. Curiously, however, the ED hasn’t been able to substantiate many of its charges, with its conviction rate remaining at an abysmal low.
The Wire had earlier reported that there is a four-fold jump in ED cases since 2014; 95% of those cases are against opposition leaders. Almost 95% of the cases probed by the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation against political leaders are from the opposition. Although the ED claims that it has a high conviction rate of 96%, the figures appear to be misplaced if one factors in the number of cases it has closed since 2005. The ED registered 5,906 cases until March 2023 but completed the probe and filed a chargesheet in only 1,142 cases – out of which it has disposed of only 25 cases, a mere 0.42 of the total number of cases. Of those 25 cases, the ED has managed convictions in 24 cases, which is around 96% conviction rate as claimed by the agency.
In such circumstances, the opposition’s claim that the agencies are being misused has gathered much currency, especially amidst high polarisation in Indian politics. The BJP, instead of clearing the doubts, has often given out details of various cases even before the ED or CBI has publicly shared them, lending further credence to the opposition’s claim. As the 2024 Lok Sabha election draws closer by the day, the polarised opinion regarding such targeted action on opposition leaders will only escalate, even as the ED raids are likely to gather more pace, giving further ammunition to the BJP to target the opposition leaders.
