NEW DELHI: The Congress party has reacted sharply after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a charge sheet against former Haryana chief minister and senior party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

The Modi government at the Centre is targeting political opponents by implicating them in false cases to divert people’s attention from the “paralysis of governance,” the Congress alleged.

Randeep Surjewala, the Congress spokesperson, said the party would not be cowed down by “such political vendetta.” He said the Modi government is in a desperate bid to save itself from public outrage ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

He said several Congress leaders like Bhupender Singh Hooda, Virbhadra Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Sachin Pilot, P. Chidambaram and his family, Ashok Chavan, Sheila Dikshit and Harish Rawat have been booked in false cases. Even ex-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is being targeted.

“There is public outrage against the Modi government in the country. The government wants to throttle opposition voice,” he said.

He pointed out that the Centre is trying hard to revive the Bofors case to defame the Congress. The CBI, at the behest of government, moved Supreme Court to reopen Bofors case.

“The decision of the Delhi High Court in the Bofors case established how Congress leadership, including (former prime minister) Rajiv Gandhi, was a victim of the smear campaign of the BJP decades ago,” Surjewala said.

A Delhi High Court ruling of Feb.4, 2004, had given a clean bill to Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors pay-off case.

Surjewala said that even Attorney General KK Venugopal in his letter said that there is no evidence or truth in the case. “Despite that, after 27 years of the death of Rajiv Gandhi, filing an appeal in the courts exposes the Modi government,” he said.

This was done “purely with a view to divert attention from the paralysis of governance” and was part of a “conspiracy hatched by the Modi government and the BJP leadership for their vested political interests,” Surjewala said.

“The Modi government is indulging in political vendetta by lodging Congress leaders in false cases. As its political graph is falling down, the government is getting Congress leaders implicated in baseless and false cases through CBI and other agencies.

“But, Congress leaders will fight these conspiracies and false criminal cases with full rigour,” he told the media.

“CBI has truly become a BJP’s ‘Captive Bureau of Investigation.’ Rank politicisation of CBI by Modi Government to seek revenge against opposition leaders is writ large in successive cases,” he said.

Hooda and 33 others have been charged with the alleged land acquisition scam in Manesar area of Gurugram that caused a loss of around Rs15 billion to farmers. The CBI charge sheet says builders bought land worth Rs16 billion for just Rs1 billion from about 200 farmers on the pretext that it would be acquired by the state government for a nominal amount.

The CBI says builders threatened farmers that the government would acquire their land. They allegedly bought around 459 acres from farmers at prices in the range of Rs2 to 2.5 million per acre. This was a throwaway price. Another 50 acres were bought at the rate of even Rs15 million per acre.

Hooda could be overshadowed by the case as Haryana votes for a new state assembly next year.