Editorial: Devious designs

Like how a buyer on an e-commerce portal adds items to the cart before checking out, the BJP’s weird idea of shopping involves adding the States to its political cart through a devious game of offering inducements and engineering defections. There is a clear pattern emerging in its game plan across the country. The list […]

Like how a buyer on an e-commerce portal adds items to the cart before checking out, the BJP’s weird idea of shopping involves adding the States to its political cart through a devious game of offering inducements and engineering defections. There is a clear pattern emerging in its game plan across the country. The list of States which have gone into the saffron party’s kitty through this shameful strategy is long: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, and Puducherry. However, its covert plan in Telangana to bribe the ruling TRS legislators and destabilise the government has been busted. In the process, the BJP has been thoroughly exposed after its agents were caught red-handed while trying to reach out to their targets with money bags. The party’s central leadership owes an explanation to the people about the huge bribe — Rs 100 crore to each of the four TRS MLAs — sought to be offered by the BJP agents who were arrested by the police from a farmhouse on the outskirts of Hyderabad. This is a brazen misuse of power and illegitimate use of money and flies in the face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party colleagues who often parrot homilies about probity in public life. The three BJP agents who were arrested by the Cyberabad police had allegedly threatened the legislators with ED and CBI raids if they did not join BJP. It clearly fits into a pattern where the BJP has systematically weaponised the central investigating agencies to relentlessly go after the opposition leaders.

There is a clear and systematic pattern of using the probe agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to muzzle the voice of the opposition and intimidate them into submission. The allegations of disproportionate assets and PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) violations are among the most common charges slapped on the opposition politicians. But those who defect to the BJP earn complete immunity and get to sleep soundly. The fact that the convictions in such cases have been as low as nine out of 1,569 cases during the decade proves that they are largely politically motivated. There was a time when the central government used to dissolve the Assemblies, particularly in opposition-ruled States. Now, the trend is to manoeuvre the MLAs of the ruling party and try to install a government of their choice. The ‘Operation Farmhouse’ of the BJP appears to be the party’s latest version of the 2015 cash-for-vote scam in which the Telugu Desam Party had offered Rs 50 lakh to buy the vote of a nominated legislator in the election for the Telangana Legislative Council. Interestingly, the BJP was TDP’s ally then and the combine did not have enough votes. The main accused in the 2015 scandal, A Revanth Reddy, is now the State Congress chief, after having defected from the TDP.

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