Politicians Facing Corruption Charges Join BJP to Get Acquitted: Report
Politicians Facing Corruption Charges Join BJP to Get Acquitted: Report
Global reports reveal that corruption is increasing exponentially in the Modi government.
By Rakesh Raman
A new report finds that a slew of opposition politicians joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of prime minister (PM) Narendra Modi to get acquitted in corruption cases, as the Modi government controls the central investigating agencies.
Since 2014 when Modi became the PM, according to the report compiled by The Indian Express, 25 opposition leaders facing corruption investigations joined BJP and 23 of them got reprieve.
According to the report, the opposition politicians who joined BJP to get acquitted belong to different political outfits: 10 from Congress; four each from Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Shiv Sena; three from All India Trinamool Congress (TMC); two from Telugu Desam Party (TDP); and one each from Samajwadi Party (SP) and Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP).
The Indian Express report released on April 4, 2024, reveals that six of the politicians from opposition parties moved to the BJP this year alone, weeks before the Lok Sabha election scheduled to take place from April 19.
The leaders named in the report include Ajit Pawar, Praful Patel, Ashok Chavan, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Suvendu Adhikari, Pratap Sarnaik, Hasan Mushrif, Bhavana Gawali, and others.
Opposition parties allege that the Modi government (which is in fact Modi alone because he works like a dictator) misuses the central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and the Income Tax Department to terrorize the opposition parties so that they do not raise their voice against the wrongdoings of the Modi regime.
Another report of March 22, 2024 in The Indian Express showed that between 2014 and September 2022, 121 prominent political leaders came under the ED radar while 115 of them were from the opposition parties.
Although Modi falsely claims that he is working to weed out corruption from the country, it is being observed that Modi and his government have crossed all limits of corruption and malfeasance.
The electoral bonds scam, for example, reveals that Modi’s BJP is the largest beneficiary of this clandestine corruption fund. Electoral bonds are among the instruments of bribe that big corporates use to secretly fund political parties in quid pro quo deals.
In many cases of corruption by the Modi regime, courts and investigating agencies turn a blind eye to absolve Modi and his friends because court judges and investigating officers work as slaves in the Modi empire.
In the Adani case, for example, the Supreme Court deceptively exonerated the Adani Group in the money laundering and accounting fraud case because oligarch Gautam Adani is a partner of PM Modi.
In fact, the Modi-Adani collusion case is termed as the Modani (portmanteau for Modi and Adani) corruption scandal, which is perhaps the biggest grand corruption crime in the history of mankind.
The other corruption cases in which the Indian judiciary succumbed and dishonestly protected the Modi regime include PM-CARES Fund case, Rafale corruption case, Sri Lanka energy project case involving Adani Group, Modi-Adani collusion case, Sahara-Birla payoff case, Predator Drone deal, and a number of other cases in which Modi’s party colleagues are allegedly involved.
Since Modi has been misusing the agencies to arrest and incarcerate opposition leaders, some of them who are actually involved in corruption and money laundering rackets, claim that the cases against them are politically motivated.
As the Modi regime is founded on crime and corruption, it does not allow the investigating agencies to work independently. While most agencies are defunct, Modi blatantly violates constitutional norms to appoint former judges and officials with tainted records to head top offices.
For example, a former Supreme Court judge Ajay Manikrao Khanwilkar has been appointed as the chairperson of India’s top anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal. After retiring from the Supreme Court in July 2022, Khanwilkar has been rewarded with the plum position at the Lokpal office largely because of his judgments in favour of Modi or the Modi regime.
[ HINDI VIDEO: You can click here to watch a related video in Hindi. The video is also given below. ]
Meanwhile, global reports reveal that corruption is increasing exponentially in the Modi government. The 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released on January 30, 2024 by Transparency International reveals extreme corruption in India.
According to CPI, India shows score fluctuations small enough that no firm conclusions can be drawn on any significant change, but the country’s score dropped to 39 in 2023 from 40 a year ago.
That means corruption has increased in the country of 1.4 billion people. According to a Times of India report of January 30, 2024, India’s CPI rank slipped from 85 in 2022 to 93 in 2023, which indicates more corruption.
However, in the absence of investigations by the courts or the agencies into the corruption cases of Modi or his associates, they get off scot-free and Modi deceives the people by falsely claiming that he is tackling the corruption menace.
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 been publishing The Integrity Bulletin news magazine since 2018 to cover local and international corruption issues to engage with different stakeholders who are trying to combat corruption in the world.
In order to inform the Indian citizens and the global community about the extent of corruption in India, he compiled and released in October 2023 a comprehensive research report “India Corruption Research Report 2023 (ICRR 2023)”. It is the second annual report on corruption in India while the first report ICRR 2022 was released in October 2022.
He runs a community-driven anti-corruption social service “Clean House” to help the residents of Delhi raise their voice against the growing corruption and injustice in housing societies where millions of people suffer because of rampant corruption and lawlessness.
