Modi's desperate plan for the Gandhis: Will it help him shore up his image?

If BJP loses all three states tomorrow, Modi may move to go after the Gandhis but he should remember Indira Gandhi's example

Is Prime Minister Narendra Modi throwing so much muck at the Gandhis hoping that his government’s image will appear less sullied? 

Prime Minister Modi had promised to eradicate corruption in 2014. He could have acted against corruption much earlier had he wanted to. But legal process is far too slow to be of dramatic value. He must have learnt this much from the slow progress of the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED’s) case against former finance minister P Chidambaram. 

So the timing of Modi’s attack against former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her kin right now may be for its propaganda value in the run up to the general elections. 

During the Rajasthan election campaign, the prime minister touted a recent judgment of the Supreme Court (SC) as a great victory for the government. The SC had allowed reassessment of the income tax paid by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi for the financial year 2011-2012. It related to the takeover of Associated Journals Ltd, the publishers of National Herald newspaper. 

Potentially both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi could be slapped with punitive tax returns running up to Rs 350 million each. They may not be able to pay this by taking personal bank loans because that would require enormous collateral. If the court order goes against the Gandhis and is concluded before April 2019, then IT notices will be served on them. A failure to pay income tax can disqualify a candidate from contesting polls.

The important question is whether Modi will have the gumption to disqualify the Gandhis from the next general election?

Another tack in Modi’s move to discredit the Gandhis is to attack Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law, Robert Vadra. Initially, the government agencies targeted former chief minister of Haryana, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, in land acquisition cases in the state. Hooda is considered to be close to the Gandhi family, especially Vadra. Among the cases of land acquisition and money laundering filed against him, the Central Bureau of Investigation has also filed a charge-sheet against him and Motilal Vohra for re-allotting an institutional plot in Panchkula to Associated Journals Ltd. 

The government’s moves against Vadra are now more open. The ED has raided three associates of Vadra, apparently searching for evidence of bribes taken in defence deals and channelling that money into properties abroad. 

Vadra is already under investigation by the ED for a ‘fraudulent’ land deal in Bikaner. He has been issued a third summons to appear before the investigating officer in this matter after he ignored two previous summons. Vadra is also being investigated by the agency in land cases in Gurgaon. Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act the ED has the powers to seek custodial investigation of an accused who wilfully avoids joining an investigation. So the second question is: When and whether the government will seek the custodial interrogation of Vadra?

Prime Minister Modi was positively gleeful about his efforts to corner the Gandhis at the fag-end of the election campaign in Rajasthan. On the successful extradition of Christian Michel, middleman in a VIP helicopter deal, he crowed that the man with the secrets (raazdar) would reveal the corruption of the naamdars (Gandhis). Michel’s lawyer and his sister alerted the media before his extradition that he was under pressure to name Sonia Gandhi as a bribe recipient in lieu of being let off.

Selective leaks from Michel’s investigation are to be expected. The CBI has him in custody for five days (ending on December 10). Since Michel cannot be forced to implicate Sonia Gandhi without first admitting his own guilt, it will require a deal akin to a plea bargain for him to implicate the Gandhis or those close to them.

The PM’s keenness to corner Sonia Gandhi is abundantly evident. His hatred of Sonia was palpable when he referred to her in one of his campaign speeches as the “Congress widow” who had stolen money from a widows’ pension fund. 

Whether he will take the bull by the horns and arrest either her or a member of the Gandhi family will depend on how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fares in the just concluded state-assembly elections.

If the BJP retains two of the three important states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, Prime Minister Modi may continue playing cat and mouse with the Gandhi family but not move in for the kill.

If, however, the BJP loses all the three states, and Narendra Modi’s image as a vote-getter stands at risk, he could order stronger action against the Gandhi family. There is no dearth of tactical advisors in the Prime Minister’s Office who would encourage such a line of action. 

But might the government be making the same mistake that Morarji Desai did in October 1977 by ordering the arrest of Indira Gandhi and four of her ministers? Desai was under pressure from the then Home Minister, Chaudhary Charan Singh who was himself urged to move against Indira by stalwarts like Nanaji Deshmukh of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, External Affairs Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Information and Broadcasting Minister L K Advani. That fatal mistake led to Indira Gandhi's political revival.

What is clear in the present context, however, is that corruption as a major poll issue for the BJP in 2019 will be confined to targeting the Gandhis and the Congress. Modi will not spread the net to include non-Congress Opposition leaders like Mayawati, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar – who have been harassed by government agencies before. He may want to make a deal with them later.

Discrediting Sonia Gandhi and the Congress could make the Congress party untouchable for the rest of the Opposition. That will adversely impact prospects of an Opposition alliance in 2019.

It is by no means certain that such a strategy would work in the BJP’s favour. It may not divert attention sufficiently from the shortcomings of the Modi government. People may instead rally behind the Gandhis and the Congress if they believe they are being persecuted for political gain.

The writer is a journalist based in Delhi. He tweets @bharatitis