India, cases of corruption and changes of shirt inflame the electoral campaign

The key points

• The march towards the vote proceeds between imprisoned politicians and transformism
• Since 2014, the BJP has been hoarding opposition leaders in trouble with the law
• Delhi chief minister’s preventive detention extended

Listen to the audio version of the article

NEW DELHI – Indian politics has been no stranger to judicial incursions for some time now. The last decades have been dotted with investigations, scandals, real or alleged bribes that have crippled governments and put their opponents in check. Not even the phenomenon of transformism it is a rarity: in a scenario that is increasingly less ideologically connoted, the ancient custom of splits has been joined by that of changes of shirt.

The news is that for some years the two phenomena seem to have been dangerously intertwined.

The investigation

This is supported by an investigation byIndian Express which reconstructed the vicissitudes of the 25 opposition figures who from 2014 to today were first accused of corruption and then moved to Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The period examined is not random: it starts from the year of the establishment of the first government led by the current prime minister. According to the newspaper, 23 of the 25 defectors were in fact pardoned: three cases were closed, the other twenty appear to be frozen, given that after the move to the BJP the investigations suddenly became less urgent.

The family’s Indian National Congress Gandhi he wasted no time in riding the story, calling the BJP a “washing machine” for the effectiveness with which, according to the newspaper’s thesis, it could clean up the reputation of those who renounce their political faith. The Congress’s resentment towards the BJP is well known: it is not only the main opposition party and the historic heavyweight of Indian politics that has been away from the halls of power for a decade, but also the main external supplier of parliamentarians to the governing party. It is from its ranks that the majority of “traitors” come: 10 out of 25.

The agencies under accusation

The investigative agencies accused of selective inaction are those that depend directly on the central government, i.e. the Central Bureau of Investigation (Cbi) and the Enforcement Directorate (Ed), not without some incursions from the Income Tax department (It).