At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is positioning himself as a crusader against corruption in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections, his ‘Bhrastachar Hatao’ slogan has been exposed as hollow by an investigation by the The Indian Express published on Wednesday, 3 April.
The two front-page reports, which continue inside for the better part of a page, supports the Opposition INDIA bloc’s mocking description of the BJP as a washing machine. Indeed, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera even presented a dummy washing machine at a media briefing to make his point.
This makes a `corrupt politician’ to become `clean’ once joins BJP and he will be cleared from all the cases of `severe corruption’ and `money laundering’ probed by central probe agencies like IT, CBI and ED.
Reacting to the report, Khera quipped on Wednesday, “High time the BJP officially declares ED, CBI & IT to be its business development team!”
Since 2014, as many as 25 prominent politicians facing action from Central agencies for alleged corruption have crossed over to the BJP. They cut across party lines: 10 are from the Congress; four each from NCP and Shiva Sena; three from TMC; two from TDP; and one each from SP and YSRCP.
Three of the cases have been closed; 20 others remain stalled or in cold storage — the investigative agency’s action, after the switch, has been, in fact, inaction. Six of the politicians on this list moved to the BJP this year alone, weeks before the general elections.
This is in sharp contrast to what happens when the accused is in the Opposition — an investigation by The Indian Express in 2022 revealed how 95 per cent of prominent politicians that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) took action against after 2014, when the NDA came to power, were from the Opposition.
The investigation by Deeptiman Tiwary revealed:
1. At least 25 politicians accused of corruption by Central agencies have crossed over to the BJP in the last 10 years since 2014. Ten of them were from the Congress, four each from the Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena, three from the Trinamool Congress, two from Telugu Desam Party, and one each from the Samajwadi Party and YSRCP.
2. As many as 12 of the politicians are from Maharashtra, while as many as 11 joined the BJP in 2022, and six of them this year.
3. Corruption cases against three of them, including Ajit Pawar and Praful Patel, have been closed, with the CBI dropping the case against Patel after seven years of investigation last month. The CBI has also filed a closure report in the case of mining baron Gali Janardhan Reddy in Karnataka, who re-joined the BJP last month.
4. In the case of 20 politicians, the cases have not moved after they joined the BJP. In only two cases — against Jyoti Mirdha and Y.Sujana Chaudhary — has there been no sign of a let up, the report mentions.
5. Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla has sat over the request for a sanction to prosecute erstwhile TMC leader Suvendu Adhikari in the Narada case for five years since 2019. Birla, who was proactive in expelling Rahul Gandhi and Mahua Moitra, did not respond to the prosecution request even as Adhikari, an MP in 2019, joined the BJP in 2020 and is the leader of the opposition in the West Bengal Assembly.
6. Similarly, the case against Himanta Biswa Sarma — the present chief minister of Assam — in the Sarada investigation has not moved after he joined the BJP in 2015.
Money laundering cases against Opposition politicians by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) have zoomed up since 2017. Tellingly, 95 per cent of the cases since 2014 have been against Opposition leaders. In an earlier report, Indian Express had revealed that of the 121 political leaders who came under the ED’s radar between 2014 and 2022, 115 of them are from the Opposition.
