The major reason for the Congress’s downfall was the rampant corruption that its leaders regularly indulged in plundering public wealth during the 10-year tenure of the UPA under Manmohan Singh and now as the ghosts of corruption finally catches up with the likes of DK Shivakumar, P Chidambaram and now most recently, Sharad Pawar. Unsurprisingly, all of them have claimed vendetta politics as they face the prospect of spending the rest of their lives in jail. The Wire in its article claims that the Enforcement Director is the biggest ally of the BJP and has been activated at the behest of Home Minister Amit Shah as the Maharashtra and Haryana elections approach.
As is the norm, The Wire and its journalist cum troll has toed the Congress’s line and has attempted to defend the corrupt and the indefensible.
Swati Chaturvedi, as usual, is completely oblivious of basic facts and the ground reality. The BJP is cruising to a victory in both the states as there is a sizeable pro-incumbency wave as the Congress has already accepted defeat in both the states and has failed to put up a fight.
Sharad Pawar is no longer significant to Maharashtra politics as NCP is struggling to fight for relevance and is unlikely to pose a challenge to the BJP and Fadnavis.
The Wire true to its characteristics has decided to leave logic at bay with such a shambolic article. If it was indeed a case of vendetta politics, the ED crackdown would have happened in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls.
India is always in election mode and the logic that the ED crackdown on the eve of Maharashtra and Haryana elections stands on shaky grounds.
Prime Minister Modi has long been pushing for ‘one nation, one election’ which has been resisted by the likes of Congress. India’s election cycle never ends and post Maharashtra and Haryana elections, Delhi and Bihar are slated to go to polls and going by Swati Chaturvedi’s logic, the Enforcement Directorate shouldn’t act against the corrupt as it would be labelled as a case of political vendetta.
The article is filled with comical punchlines as Swati Chaturvedi attempts to please her masters. She claims that DK Shivakumar is in jail because Amit Shah is still hurting over Ahmed Patel’s Rajya Sabha victory as DK Shivakumar helped him as he stored the Gujarat MLAs in his resort.
Poor Swati is completely blind to the humongous wealth amassed by Shivakumar during his political tenure and has over 317 bank accounts and has benumbed properties of worth over Rs. 800 crore and his unaccounted wealth is over Rs. 1000 crore and now has reached a point where counting his wealth seems futile.
His close aides have gone on record and admitted that Shivakumar has indulged in Hawala transactions and is also accused to send funds to the Congress HQ.
Sharad Pawar and his family have made a name for themselves as they have managed to become synonymous with corruption. He along with Ajit Pawar has managed to plunder over Rs. 1,000 crore of public money through scams like the irrigation scam or the Maharashtra State Co-Operative State Bank scam.
Swati Chaturvedi made it a point to mention the age of P Chidambaram (74) as she sought to absolve him of his crimes against the country and project PM Modi as someone who doesn’t even spare the senior citizens.
Notwithstanding the fact that Chidambaram along with his son Karti has left no stone unturned to loot public money through various scams like the NSEL scam, Chidambaram had effectively sold India out at the International Court of Justice in the Enron case by hiring Pakistan lawyer Qureshi to defend India at the ICJ and received kickbacks worth millions of dollars from Enron as India lost the case in ICJ and was made to pay $300 million to the now-defunct company.
The Wire’s article is full of comic punchlines as Chaturvedi decides to leave logic at bay. However, the best punchline was saved for the last. The Wire ended the article with the statement that ‘Swati Chaturvedi is a Delhi based journalist’.