The long history of raids by central agencies on Opposition leaders during elections

On April 3, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said it has attached assets worth Rs 3 crore of Trinamool Congress (TMC) spokesperson Kunal Ghosh, Lok Sabha MP Satabdi Roy and Debjani Mukherjee in the Saradha chit fund case of poll-bound West Bengal where two-time chief minister Mamata Banerjee is locked in a high-stakes battle with the BJP.

A day before, Income Tax officials raided the properties of DMK chief MK Stalin’s daughter Senthamarai and her husband Sabareesan in Chennai on April 2, four days ahead of assembly polls in Tamil Nadu where the ruling AIADMK-BJP combine is contesting against opposition’s DMK-Congress alliance.

The NDA, and UPA in the past have faced allegations of misusing central agencies against political rivals. There exists  a pattern in such actions. Whichever party runs the central government, whether it is the NDA, or UPA in the past, Opposition parties have alleged that central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or the Income Tax (I-T) department raid the premises linked to Opposition leaders or their aides in states where the party ruling at the Centre is not in power.

The Opposition alleges that the raids are linked to the elections, a charge that the agencies deny, even as a pattern of sorts has emerged over the years. The previous governments, including the UPA regime under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, faced the same allegations.

Amid the elections in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry, the raids by central agencies have returned.  In West Bengal, for example, TMC MP and chief minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew, Abhishek Banerjee has been on the radar of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). In March, the ED issued summons for the state minister Partha Chaterjee and former minister Madan Mitra, in chit fund case. Both are contesting elections.

In the south, the ruling LDF government in Kerala has been in trouble with the National Investigation Agency (NIA) regarding the gold smuggling case. The NIA has questioned M Sivasankar, principal secretary to the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who was later arrested by ED. In Tamil Nadu, before the last week’s raids on properties linked to Stalin’s daughter and son-in-law, the Income Tax department searched the residence of senior DMK leader EV Velu’s in Tiruvannamalai, the constituency from where he is contesting the assembly election.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on April 2 said raiding the Opposition is the BJP’s “coping mechanism” when it is facing defeat in elections.

Raiding the opposition is BJP’s coping mechanism when facing electoral defeat.

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 2, 2021

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman responded to allegations saying the cases had been there for long.

“These cases were not filed during elections but have commenced before. The law enforcement agencies take their own time in the due process. Also, it is the Election Commission which acts based on the feed back from observers during the polls,” she told CNNNews18 in an interview

From Congress leader and former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda in 2019 to BJP MLAs in Odisha in 2017, former Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat in 2016 and NCP chief Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar in 2019, the recent history is replete with incidents of investigating agencies going after BJP rivals.

In August 2017, for example, the I-T department conducted searches at as many as 70 properties in Bengaluru, Mysuru, Delhi and Chennai linked to D K Shivakumar, the then energy minister in the Congress government of Karanataka. This at a time when Shivakumar was reportedly protecting a group of 42 Congress legislators from Gujarat in a resort near Bengaluru in to help late Congress leader Ahmed Patel win Rajya Sabha polls. In 2018, the I-T department filed a complaint of tax evasion and false evidence against Shivakumar in 2018, ahead of the assembly polls. Shivakumar was arrested by ED in September 2019 in connection with an alleged money laundering case registered in 2018.

In July 2019 crisis in the ruling Congress government in Rajasthan, the I-T department and ED searched the properties linked to of chief minister Ashok Gehlot’s associates, including Rajiv Arora and Dharmendra Rathore.

Allegations of central agencies, especially the CBI, changing the course of investigations according to the changing political equations of the accused, is not a new phenomenon.

In October 2013, seven months before the BJP-led NDA stormed to power at the centre, late BJP leader Arun Jaitley wrote an open letter to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accusing the Congress of misusing investigative agencies like the CBI to “falsely” implicate then then BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi and his close aides like Amit Shah in the killings of Sohrabuddin, Ishrat Jahan, Tulsi Prajapati and Harin Pandya.

“The Congress cannot fight the BJP and Modi politically. By misuse of CBI they have so far tried various methods of falsely implicating Modi, Amit Shah, and other important BJP leaders,”Jaitley, the former finance minister, wrote in his 15-page letter.

The flipflops in disproportionate assets (DA) case against Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav is a classic example.  After registering a DA case in March 2007 against Mulayam Singh Yadav, CBI said it had ‘sufficient material’ against Mulayam and his family members including his son and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav, and his wife and former MP Dimple Yadav.

In July 2008, SP bailed out the UPA government after the Left parties deserted the alliance over the Indo-US nuclear deal. A month later, the then Law Minister HR Bhardwaj sought the opinion of the then Solicitor General GE Vahanvati allegedly to prepare the ground for a dilution of the case against the Yadavs of Uttar Pradesh. Vahanvati recommended a clean chit for Yadav and family. Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP) president and former UP CM

Mayawati had in March 2013, accused both the BJP and the Congress of targeting her by using the CBI to investigate a complaint of disproportionate assets against her.