Will agencies like ED, CBI and IT become hyperactive?

For quite a while, opposition parties and other critics of the Narendra Modi regime have accused it of weaponizing central agencies to harass, intimidate and subvert opposition parties & leaders who strongly oppose the Union Government.

For quite a while, opposition parties and other critics of the Narendra Modi regime have accused it of weaponising central agencies to harass, intimidate and subvert opposition parties & leaders who strongly oppose the Union Government. They contend that the MVA government in Maharashtra was toppled primarily through pressure exerted by agencies like the Enforcement Directorate on Shiv Sena leaders who then revolted against their party Supremo Uddhav Thackeray, deposed him in a palace coup and joined hands with the BJP to form a new government. For the record, two former ministers of the Maharashtra government belonging to the NCP, Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik have been arrested by the ED on money laundering charges. Both have tried in vain for months but failed to obtain bail from any court in India. Similarly, the ED recently conducted raids in and around Kolkatta and discovered close to Rs 60 crores in cash from the premises of Arpita Mukherjee, a close aide of former minster and very senior leader of the Trinamool Congress Partha Chatterjee who is now behind bars. Another top TMC leader Anubroto Mondal has been arrested by the CBI on cattle smuggling charges.

So eyebrows were raised when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced during his Independence Day speech that his fight against corruption has reached a decisive stage and he sought the support of the youth of India in this decisive war against corruption. India Tracker is not concerned with the political optics and controversies surrounding the issue. It is more focused on data. Are corrupt politicians and officials being punished as per law? In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on July 27, 2022, the finance ministry revealed that the number of searches and raids conducted by the ED increased 27 times to 3010 between 2014 and 2022 compared to just 112 searches during the 10 years of UPA rule between 2004 and 2014. It seems property and assets worth close to Rs 1 lakh crores has been attached. Besides, prosecution complaints have been filed in 888 cases leading to 23 convictions. It is the abysmally low rate of convictions that the opposition parties cite as proof that the actions are meant to harass political opponents rather fight corruption. The government insists that it cannot interfere with the judiciary and court cases in India do take a long time to be disposed off.

What do ordinary Indians think about the efforts of the prime minister to fight corruption? C Voter conducted a survey on behalf of the magazine India Today for their special Mood of the Nation issue. According to the comprehensive survey where more than 1,10,000 Indians were contacted, 50.5% of the respondents stated that the Modi government has been able to reduce corruption in India. As the accompanying chart shows, a C Voter-India Tracker poll on August 15 shows that a majority of Indians think that the Modi regime will win the war against corruption. Predictably, 47.1% of opposition supporters thought as much.