Like PM, ED is BJP’s star campaigner: Kharge

PTI, Nov 7, 2023, 7:41 PM IST

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday said like prime minister Narendra Modi, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ”star campaigner” in the ongoing assembly elections.

The Central Bureau of Investigation and Income Tax department are also in the fray on the BJP’s behalf, he said at a public meeting here ahead of the November 17 elections in Madhya Pradesh.

“Congress has one candidate (per constituency), but the BJP has four. There is a (party) candidate who is visible, but there are three others who are invisible….ED, which is campaigning like a star campaigner, like Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A second candidate is the CBI, which also goes after the (rival) candidates to weaken them, and a third is the Income Tax,” Kharge said. “Besides these three, there are Modi and (Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh) Chouhan….they are like `Panch Pandav’, not of the ancient time but of today’s, who are trying to defeat us,” the Congress leader said. “But we have to teach them a lesson,” Kharge said.

With elections taking place in Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh, the ED was harassing the party’s leaders there and threatening chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, he alleged. ”This is not a democratic way and not a level-playing field, but this threatening and intimidating is going on,” he said.

Last week the ED claimed it had recorded the statement of a ‘cash courier’ who alleged that the promoters of the Mahadev betting app paid Rs 508 crore to Baghel, and it was a ”subject matter of investigation”.

Slamming BJP leaders for asking what Congress did for the country, Kharge said, “The Congress has saved the country and its Constitution, because of which they become chief minister. These BJP leaders have not fought for the country’s democracy and independence but sided with the British. If we had not made efforts, the country’s picture could have been different.” Congress leaders Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi sacrificed their lives for the country, he said. The ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh was ”number one in corruption, farmer suicides, crime against women, malnutrition and unemployment” and the Congress will bring about a change, Kharge said. “They were in power for the last 18 years in Madhya Pradesh and for ten years in the country and called themselves a double-engine government, but they could not solve the problems of the people of the state,” he said.

Talking about the Congress’s various ”guarantees” (poll promises), he said it will conduct a caste census to ascertain the exact population of various castes and frame schemes for them accordingly.