Patna Meeting: Corrupt Assemble to Defeat Corrupt in 2024 Lok Sabha Election

Patna Meeting: Corrupt Assemble to Defeat Corrupt in 2024 Lok Sabha Election

Almost all the Indian politicians are so corrupt that they have assets disproportionate to their known sources of income. It is a punishable crime.

By Rakesh Raman

Nearly 16 Indian opposition parties assembled in Patna today (June 23) with an ostensibly common objective to defeat the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of prime minister (PM) Narendra Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

Bihar chief minister (CM) and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar hosted the meeting led by the largest opposition party Congress. Although it is supposed to be a political gathering to strategize the roadmap for the election, it was visible that a number of political outfits participated in the meeting to save their leaders from serious corruption cases.

Several political parties allege that Modi is misusing the central agencies such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to implicate opposition leaders in false corruption and money laundering cases.

For example, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi are facing a serious money laundering case being investigated by the ED. The case is related to the financial irregularities in the management of the National Herald newspaper.

A number of leaders of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Trinamool Congress have also been jailed for their alleged involvement in massive corruption cases. Since the corrupt parties want to use the opposition unity as a shield to hide their corruption cases, AAP leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has openly expressed his intention.

Kejriwal said the priority of the opposition meeting should be to discuss an ordinance that has been introduced by the Modi government to check increasing corruption in the Kejriwal government.

While a couple of top AAP politicians are in jail for their acts of corruption, Kejriwal’s AAP is perhaps the only party in India in which almost all the politicians are dishonest. It is expected that soon other AAP politicians – including Kejriwal – will be jailed.

That is why Kejriwal is arm-twisting the other opposition leaders to vote against the Modi government’s ordinance in the Rajya Sabha so that he could enjoy unlimited administrative powers in Delhi to dishonestly close the corruption cases against AAP politicians.

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A number of other politicians are reluctant to join the opposition camp because they fear that Modi will get their own corruption cases opened by the CBI and ED. In fact, almost all the Indian politicians are so corrupt that they have assets disproportionate to their known sources of income. It is a punishable crime.

Along with opposition parties, Modi’s own party BJP is believed to be highly corrupt while Modi himself is facing multiple corruption allegations in a slew of cases. These cases include the PM-CARES Fund case, Rafale corruption case, Sri Lanka energy project case involving Gautam Adani’s group, as  Adani is a close capitalist friend of Modi, Modi-Adani collusion case, Sahara-Birla payoff case, and a number of other cases in which Modi’s party colleagues are allegedly involved. 

Since the Indian courts, including the Supreme Court, are complicit in most government crimes, the cases in which Modi or his colleagues are involved never get investigated. The corrupt opposition leaders are so scared that they hardly raise the issue of Modi’s corruption.

That is why the opposition meeting is a deceptive exercise being carried out under the garb of opposition unity for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Actually, it is the assembly of a criminal caucus that is hell-bent on defeating another criminal group by hook or by crook so that all of them could get an equal opportunity to loot the 1.4 billion Indians.

The crooks in politics, judiciary, and bureaucracy have made India a dystopian state. Now it is not possible to survive and thrive in Indian politics if you are not corrupt. 

You can leapfrog in the dirty political arena if you are a history-sheeter with a solid criminal record which must include dacoity, vandalism, murders, rapes, and robbery.

Today, the majority of the successful Indian politicians have such a distinguished criminal record. While ordinary citizens are suffering under their atrocities, the Indian bureaucrats, court judges, police, and security forces behave as the slaves of the criminal politicians and never try to protect citizens and their rights. 

So, even if the government changes after the Lok Sabha election, the misery of Indians is not going to diminish because all politicians in all political parties are equally bad. 

While Modi is so cunning that it will be difficult to defeat him and his party in the next Lok Sabha election, many Indians want to have a non-traditional PM. In an ongoing RMN Poll, 26% respondents prefer to elect Arundhati Roy and 23% want Amartya Sen as the PM of India after the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Only 10% of voters would like to see Modi or Rahul Gandhi as the PM of India.

By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of the humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society. He has also launched the “Power Play: Lok Sabha Election 2024 in India” editorial section to cover the news, events, and other developments related to the 2024 election.