oppn parties Action Against Opposition Politicians: Only Fast-Track Cases And Convictions Will Justify The Government's Stand

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  • Russia assured India that it will get the remaining two squadrons of S-400 surface-to-air missile systems by 2027
  • Kolkata Police launches a new service to report e-fraud. People losing more than Rs 10L in any e-fraud can call 1930 for automatic registration of FIR against such crime
  • US embassy in India asks vias-seekers to provide information about all their social media handles for the last 5 years, and asks the access to these handles be made 'public'. Warns that omitting any information might result in "visa denial and ineligibility for future visas"
  • India refuses to sign the SCO joint statement as it fails to address its concern over terrorism by completely omitting any reference to the Pahalgam attack
  • Mamata Banerjee claims that in a dangerous and alarming move, the Election Commission is targeting Bengal with its voter-list revision norms that need people to provide birth certificates to become voters
  • The information from the black box of crashed AI Dreamliner has been recovered and downloaded and the reasons for the crash may be known in 10 days
  • Road transport minister Nitin Gadkari urges industry to ferry goods with trucks using green fuel
  • Listed, private, non-financial companies reported a sales growth of 7.2% in 2024-25, much better than the worrisome 4.7% reported in 2023-24, showing that demand increased substantially
  • Stock markets in bull grip on Thursday: sensex soars 1000 points to 83755 and Nifty 304 points to 25549 as markets continue to celebrate easing of tensions in the Middle-East
  • Asian Squash Doubles Championships: India win all three titles - men's, women's and mixed in a superb show
  • ICC introduces two new rules in Tests: Stop clocks to calculate perfect time for over rates and letting the fielding team decide which batter will keep strike if a deliberate 'short' run is attempted
  • CBSE boards for Class X will be held twice a year from 2026
  • Reliance and Adani enter into a partneship for fuel distribution. Adani will sell Reliance petroleum products at its outlets and Reliance will sell Adani CNG from its outlets
India rejects arbitration panel for indus River treaty, says it is illegal and has no jurisdiction to rule on India's action
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Action Against Opposition Politicians: Only Fast-Track Cases And Convictions Will Justify The Government's Stand

By Sunil Garodia

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

The government is using its agencies like the IT department, the ED and the CBI to go after politicians and politically-exposed persons in a big way. The travails of former finance minister P Chidambaram at the hands of such agencies are well documented. The latest in the line of fire is DK Shivakumar, the chief troubleshooter of the Congress in Karnataka. He has been arrested by the ED under PMLA for alleged money laundering. As usual, Shivakumar has alleged that he is being targeted and the BJP government is indulging in political vendetta.

There can be no denying that the law must take its own course, always and at all times. If an inquiry is made by any of the agencies and if persons arrested during the course of the inquiry take the names of influential persons or even if documents recovered from them point to the involvement of such influential persons, the agencies are not at fault in questioning such persons. But the question that arises is why is the government targeting only opposition politicians? The whole country knows that politicians across the spectrum indulge in financial wrongdoing. Then how is it possible that the investigating agencies are not coming across the names of politicians from the BJP and other parties in the NDA?

Even if we agree with the fact that though the Congress is now protesting the action on its leaders, it had also misused all government agencies in the past, the problem is that it is very difficult to get convictions in such cases. Apart from Sukhram, Lalu Yadav and Jayalalitha, the names of other top politicians do not easily come to mind for conviction in cases of corruption and financial misdeeds. Hence, the government must tread very carefully. No point will be served in picking up politicians and lodging fancy cases against them unless such cases can be proved in court. But the way the agencies are going, one thinks that they will draw a blank. It will then become apparent that, as the opposition is alleging, the main intention was to shred reputations and stage the whole drama for television audiences. If the government and its agencies have the proof, they must move fast and start getting convictions to justify their action.