New Delhi, Oct 1 (UNI) While defending Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, the Congress on Tuesday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was misusing ED against an elected CM since he was unable to forget the defeat at the hands of people in May 2023.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here, party general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh and Chairman Legal Department Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that it was a clear case of vendetta and vengeance.
“ED is nothing but the ‘Election Department’, rather the ‘Election Demolition’ section of the BJP," Singhvi remarked, adding, “the ED was hitting below the belt to browbeat, bulldoze, and bully an elected Chief Minister.”
He said that of all the cases registered by the ED against political leaders, 95 percent were against those belonging to the Opposition parties.
Maintaining that the BJP had used the ED against Opposition leaders to hoodwink and intimidate them to defect, he said, of the 25 leaders who defected to the BJP from other parties and were facing ED cases, 23 got reprieve after joining the BJP.
He said cases against these leaders who joined the BJP were either closed or put into cold storage.
He said the BJP had now moved from the “washing machine” to the time machine by opening up decades-old cases out of political vendetta.
Dr. Singhvi questioned the lightning speed at which the ED registered a case under PMLA against Siddaramaiah within a few days of the High Court upholding the Governor's sanction to prosecute the Chief Minister.
Singhvi said Siddaramaiah was an opposition MLA when his wife was allotted plots as compensation for the land acquired from her in 2022.
Meanwhile, Jairam Ramesh said that it was an attack on the people of Karnataka as their elected Chief Minister was being threatened and intimidated using the ED and PMLA.
Since the BJP did not get enough MLAs, it is now taking recourse to PMLA, he remarked.
He observed that from the very first day Siddaramaiah became the Chief Minister, the Prime Minister, the Union Home Minister, and other ministers tried to put obstacles in the implementation of the Congress guarantees in Karnataka.
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