The shrill, loud and aggressive election campaign that BJP was running, never before seen in India, was being fuelled by black money, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma said here on Monday.
Asking the Election Commission to take cognisance of it, Sharma counted that the massive publicity and advertising budget on 514 television channels, 54 national dailies, 75 per cent of which was pre-booked by BJP, spread over 45 days of election campaigning was by rough estimates involved over Rs10,000 crore of expenditure.
“Where is the money coming from,” Sharma sought to know about the blitzkrieg. He said 2014 election was a keen contest about Congresses all embracing ideology that believed and stood by India’s plurality — diversity against that of RSS and BJP which polarised along religious lines.
“The BJP campaign had developed a cult figure to the extent that Narendra Modi had been elevated to the status of a demigod for the party was intent on capturing power by all means and at any cost,” he said.
It was an ominous warning for the country as it was the most serious threat to the Government ever for BJP has sought to centralise all power and concentrate it in the hands of one individual, said Sharma.