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Is India heading for One Nation, One Party?

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More than 50 MLAs of the Congress and the NCP are in touch with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and many of them already switched over ahead of the assembly elections which are due later this year. In more trouble for the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), its senior leader and former minister Ganesh Naik joined BJP. Naik, who was NCP’s strongman in Navi Mumbai, had called a meeting of 52 MLAs at his residence. Although NCP’s Manda Mhatre joined BJP and won the assembly polls, Naik has a hold on Navi Mumbai Corporation for nearly two decades. Not only he but his family too resigned from NCP. The NCP corporators believe that joining BJP will help them win even the next corporation polls. Therefore, a sizable number of corporators including Mayor Sandeep Naik are likely to switch over to the BJP from the NCP.

Last week, Mumbai NCP chief Sachin Ahir joined Shiv Sena and party leader Chitra Kishor Wagh also resigned as the President of Nationalist Mahila Congress Maharashtra Pradesh. She also gave up the primary membership of the party. There are rumours that her husband had come under the ED scrutiny and because of that, she decided to get in BJP. All those NCP-Congress leaders, who joined BJP recently, are known for corruption and inappropriate wealth.

Well! Guessing the pressure, NCP chief Sharad Pawar has openly made a statement that those in power are using agencies like Enforcement Directorate (ED) for coercing the opposition leaders to join their fold. The ED is being used, just like what happened in Kolhapur (IT raid on Hasan Mushrif); they were asked to join BJP but they refused and later raid happened.

In the 2014 elections, the BJP had won 122 seats out of total 288 while the Shiv Sena won 63. The Congress and the NCP bagged 42 and 41 seats respectively. Whereas those who joined BJP from NCP and Congress contradicted Pawar and said that they joined BJP because they don’t see any hope or future in their parent party. The MLAs are requesting that they want to join the BJP ahead of the assembly elections. Congress is in the shambles and the NCP has become weaker. Pawar is levelling all sorts of allegations to cover up his own political failure.

BJP might not have threatened anyone or pressurised any leader but the fact is that Congress and NCP have nothing to offer its leaders. In Maharashtra, Shiv Sena and BJP are following each other’s footsteps and picking up everyone that is willing to join their camp. Sena-BJP has strengthened their all chances of coming back to power as there is no other party to defeat or compete with them in the near future.

Earlier, even West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee alleged that BJP was misusing the central agencies to pressure the opposition leaders to defect; Sharad Pawar accused the BJP of doing exactly the same in Maharashtra. He said that the BJP-led state government was using the independent agencies like the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB), Enforcement Directorate (ED), and the CBI to browbeat the members of the opposition parties and engineer defection. BJP is forcing NCP leaders to shift their political loyalties by threatening them of legal action. These leaders had met Pawar before joining BJP but Pawar had nothing to offer them. He alleged the BJP leaders for forcing his party members to join their party or face probes. Wagh’s husband is under investigation. By invoking that case, she had been pressured to switch allegiance.

Meanwhile, the Congress party termed the raids of Enforcement Directorate (ED) on the properties of close associates of Robert Vadra as ‘dirty and malicious tricks’ of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that after facing imminent loss in all five states where assembly elections were held a few months back, the Modi government is back to its dirty tricks and malicious tactics. The tools being employed by the Modi government to hide its massive failures are mudslinging, muckraking, and hatchet jobs by the dirty tricks department — the CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] and the ED — to smear opposition leaders. Targeting the Modi government, Singhvi said that while all constitutional, legal, and administrative norms “are being thrown into a dustbin,” the central government organisations like CBI, ED and Income Tax Department are “acting as slaves and bonded labour” which are “dancing to the tune of” Prime Minister Modi. Meanwhile, another Congress leader and former Union Minister Kapil Sibal asked, ‘what kind of government is it, if law enforcement agencies start hooliganism, then who will question them? If they are supported by the Prime Minister, then who will question them? Where is the law and order in the country?’ Well, Sibal has completely forgotten that Congress has leadership crises and the party has no future ahead. When they were in power, the fate of the CBI was somewhat similar. That is the reason the CBI was termed as “Congress Bureau of Investigation”.

The monsoon session of Parliament was a litmus test for the durability and viability of a united opposition front to take on Modi’s BJP in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The BJP has already drawn blood with JD (U)’s Nitish Kumar breaking away from the fledgling 18-party opposition front to support the NDA candidate for President Ram Nath Kovind.

The popular sentiment that helped the BJP in the 2014 general election was resentment against corruption in public life. The party’s clarion call for a corruption-free India resonated with the electorate, who believed the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate when he pledged, “Na Khaunga, Na Khane Dunga (neither will I indulge in corruption, nor allow anyone else to indulge in it)”.

Ironically, we have seen consistent attacks on BJP and PM Modi for their stand on corruption in the last five years. Let’s see where the politics end and what new shape it takes; if the opposition leaders flood into BJP and alliance, the day will come soon when we can see “one nation, one party just like Russia”.


(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@www.afternoonvoice.com)

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Vaidehi Taman
Vaidehi Tamanhttps://authorvaidehi.com
Vaidehi Taman an Accredited Journalist from Maharashtra is bestowed with three Honourary Doctorate in Journalism. Vaidehi has been an active journalist for the past 21 years, and is also the founding editor of an English daily tabloid – Afternoon Voice, a Marathi web portal – Mumbai Manoos, and The Democracy digital video news portal is her brain child. Vaidehi has three books in her name, "Sikhism vs Sickism", "Life Beyond Complications" and "Vedanti". She is an EC Council Certified Ethical Hacker, OSCP offensive securities, Certified Security Analyst and Licensed Penetration Tester that caters to her freelance jobs.
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