A day after the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance’s (INDIA) meeting in Delhi, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday (December 20) summoned Lalu Prasad Yadav for questioning on December 27 in connection with the ‘land for jobs’ scam.
The ED has also summoned his son, Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav to depose before it on December 22 for the same.
The investigating agency had questioned Tejashwi for eight hours on April 11, but it is for the first time that it has summoned the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president in the case that the Central Bureau of Investigation lodged against him, his wife Rabri Devi and other family members in July 2017.
Simultaneous with the INDIA bloc parties having stepped up their efforts for sharing seats among themselves in the run up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the investigating agencies have turned up the heat on the BJP’s political opponents.
The ED has summoned the Delhi and Jharkhand chief ministers, Arvind Kejriwal and Hemant Soren respectively, in cases of alleged corruption.
Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi are continuously on the radar of the investigating agencies.
The problem for the BJP’s opponents who are under the dragnet of the investigating agencies is also that they are not getting the desired relief from the courts.
For example, the Supreme Court denied bail to the Aam Aadmi Party leader, Manish Sisodia, on October 30 despite explicitly observing on the previous day that there was no evidence against him except for a statement in the alleged case of money laundering related to the liquor policy scam.
The CBI challenging Lalu’s bail in the Supreme Court is “very unusual”, his lawyer Prabhat Kumar said. The Jharkhand high court granted bail to Lalu in the fodder scam case in April 2022, considering that the RJD supremo had completed half of his sentence – a statutory provision to get bail in the cases.
The high court had granted regular bail to Lalu, freeing him from the limitations he was supposed to observe had he got bail on health grounds.
But the CBI has challenged Lalu’s bail in the Supreme Court and has argued that he was in good health, playing badminton and doing normal activities.
“Conventional legal wisdom says that such a petition should have been rejected summarily. The Supreme Court has observed that it’s difficult for the CBI to keep Lalu in jail in the fodder cases any longer. But the court hasn’t rejected the CBI’s petition and has fixed another date for hearing it in January. We can’t predict the court’s final verdict unless it is delivered,” said Prabhat Kumar.
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Blatant misuse of power
What has baffled the opposition parties is that the investigating agencies have always timed their actions to apparently suit the political interests of the BJP.
The ED’s raids on the premises of Vinod Verma, a political advisor to the then-Chhattisgarh chief minister, Bhupesh Baghel, just ahead of polling were a glaring example of this. They were accompanied by the shrill cries on TV about corruption plaguing the Baghel dispensation.
But the alleged scams relating to the education and food sectors under Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government in Madhya Pradesh never compelled the central agencies to investigate.
Moreover, the ED and the CBI were hot on the heels of Ajit Pawar and his colleagues as long as they were in the Nationalist Congress Party. None other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that opposition politicians accused of corruption – a group understood to include Pawar and his colleagues – wouldn’t be spared for their corruption.
But the ED and the CBI never touched them after they shifted to the BJP.
“The BJP has been misusing all of the constitutional machinery – be it the offices of the head of the legislatures or of the Election Commission, apart from the investigating agencies – for its political ends. I am among 143 MPs suspended. Never before in history has India witnessed such a dark phase”, RJD spokesman and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha said.
In fact, the BJP has, apparently, broken the backs of several opposition parties with the “use” of investigating agencies against them.
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For instance, the AAP has seen three of its top-ranking leaders – Satyendar Jain, Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh – sent to jail in alleged cases of money laundering.
“It might be a big blow to us, but it will not be surprising if the ED and CBI lodged Kejriwal in jail”, said a senior RJD leader.
The way out
What has apparently rendered the INDIA strategists clueless is the fact that the BJP has been getting away with all its machinations, at least in the Hindi heartland.
Despite reports of corruption in Madhya Pradesh and perceived weaknesses in the BJP’s leadership in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the Hindutva party has won the assembly elections in the three states.
The saffron party is believed to be quite strong in Uttar Pradesh – the bastion of Hindu-Muslim politics – with the BJP working overtime to exploit the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya in January, its cadres having launched a no holds barred battle on the Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanvapi and the Krishna Janmabhoomi issues, and the Yogi Adityanath government continuously bulldozes Muslim homes and settlements.
The Congress made caste surveys, unemployment and corruption among other ‘real’ issues against the BJP in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Samajwadi party chief Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh has stated time and again that his party and its alliance partners would pit the caste survey, unemployment and price rise against the BJP’s ‘emotive’ issues.
Will it work? Only the events unfolding in the run-up to the 2024 general elections could answer this question.
Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author, media educator, and independent researcher in folklore.
