Crying foul on the raids by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, the Congress on Saturday attacked Bharatiya Janata Party for getting into ‘vindictive politics’. The Congress also alleged that the Narendra Modi Government was targeting Opposition leaders by using the CBI to browbeat them.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hate agenda and political vendetta against the Congress party and its leaders have reached its zenith today with CBI raiding at the residence of India’s senior most Chief Minister (Virbhadra Singh),” said senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Questioning the timing of the raids which took place when the Himachal CM’s daughter was about to getting married in a temple, Azad said Modi Government had set a shocking example of politics stooping to its lowest ebb. “On one side, entire family including guests from bride and bridegroom’s sides were proceeding to the temple for marriage, Modi Government, blinded by personal revenge, was raiding the residence of Virbhadra Singh. Modi Government’s lust for settling political rivalry has made it alien to India’s culture and tradition of not disrupting marriage of a daughter. This inhumane, cruel and revengeful behaviour is characteristic of personal style of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi,” Azad said.
Azad alleged the way things were happening was unprecedented. “Is it a democracy or dictatorship or whether emergency has been declared and people are still not aware of it as...An FIR is filed in the night and immediately there is a raid in the morning…Be it Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati or Mamata Banerjee if you do not fall in line and cooperate in Parliament, the CBI is ready,” the said Congressman, adding: “The intention is to paralyse the fourth estate and the Opposition by browbeating them.”
Azad also attacked BJP saying it had converted CBI as a BJP’s Investigation Bureau against political opponents. “Congress stoutly and strongly deprecates, abhors and condemns the politics of revenge and vendetta unleashed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These fascist tendencies are the very anti-thesis of healthy democracy which the Congress party stands for. Our resolve to fight the dictatorial, autocratic and vendetta driven politics of Narendra Modi and his ilk only becomes stronger and more resolute by such lowly acts of partisan political vendetta,” Azad added.
Attacking Modi, Azad said while Modi was meeting with the world leaders in the US as leader of the world’s largest democracy, domestically his Government was behaving in the worst possible manner against the Opposition.
Azad said registration of a disproportionate assets case and the raids were “very unfortunate and highly vindictive” given the fact that an Income Tax case of the Chief Minister was pending with the IT tribunal and it had not given its verdict so far. Besides, Azad claimed in a PIl in the matter in Delhi High Court, the CBI had said that no case had been made out against the Chief Minister.
Azad wondered why the PM had not initiated similar action earlier against External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje in the lalit Modi row, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan in the Vyapam scam, Chhattisgarh
Chief Minister Raman Singh in the wake of the `36,000 crore PDS scam, and in the Chikki and Tender scams in Maharashtra.