Congress taunts BJP over ‘clean chit’ to leaders aligning with ruling party
New Delhi: Congress ridiculed BJP over CBI closing a 2017 corruption case against NCP’s Praful Patel, displaying a washing machine at a press conference on Saturday. They alleged BJP’s “fully automatic washing machine” tactic--“join BJP, case closed.” This critique was voiced during Saturday’s conference, highlighting political maneuvering.
The Congress raised the issue of leaders, against whom there have been corruption charges, joining or aligning with the BJP only to see “the cases against them being closed”, an allegation often levelled by Opposition parties.The party warned it will “go after every single officer” of agencies “who has willingly become a party to undermining our democracy and our Constitution”.
Congress’ media and publicity department head Pawan Khera’s press conference at the AICC headquarters on Saturday was all about symbolism, with a “BJP washing machine’ kept on the table and a demonstration of a “dirty T-shirt” with “corruption, fraud, scam” written on it going into the machine and a clean T-shirt with “BJP Modi wash” written on it coming out of it.
In keeping with the flavour of the press conference, Khera alleged that the “BJP machine costs over Rs 8,500 crore” - the money the ruling party got through electoral bonds - and it is effective in cleaning all types of stains of corruption when used with “Modi washing powder”.
A leaflet on the “Modi washing powder” was also distributed at the press conference with the prime minister’s picture and a tagline “saare daag chutkiyon mein dhule (All stains will be washed away in a jiffy”.
Khera said months after Patel joined the BJP alliance in Maharashtra by splitting the NCP, the CBI filed a closure report in a 2017 case of corruption which the BJP had mentioned in its “charge sheet” released in 2014. The BJP in its 2014 Lok Sabha elections “charge sheet” against the UPA government had listed what it described as the “Air India scam”. Not only this, in 2019, the BJP made “some vile allegations” against Patel claiming that “he was involved in a property deal with 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts accused Iqbal Mirchi”, the Congress leader said.
Khera claimed that there are at least 21 major leaders who have been whitewashed “clean” after the BJP made allegations of corruption and illegality against them.
Khera cited the names of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Narayan Rane, Ajit Pawar, Chhagan Bhujbal and Ashok Chavan as being among those against whom the BJP had levelled allegations of corruption but stopped talking about it when they joined the ranks of the BJP. Khera asserted that the Congress has always maintained that all these “so-called scams” that the BJP spoke about were fake.
