Lalu Yadav a victim of BJP's vendetta politics, alleges Congress

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Friday accused the Modi government of misusing state institutions to target political opponents. The party claimed, on the basis of certain news reports, that former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav was one such victim of the ruling BJP's vendetta politics.

"Modi government trying to hide its epic failures in the garb by unleashing vendetta politics... While law should take its own course, but political opponents should not be targeted and hounded by blatant misuse of state machinery," Congress communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala said in a statement.



Media reports suggested that the CBI's legal wing had advised against filing an FIR against Lalu Yadav in connection to the land-for-hotels scam, citing lack of evidence against him. However, the CBI's Economic Offences Division went against the Directorate of Prosecution and registered a corruption case against Lalu and his family members for allegedly receiving kickbacks through a 'benami' company. The RJD chief is presently in jail after being convicted in three fodder scam cases in December last year.

"This chasm between the CB has surfaced when the Modi government has left no stone unturned to file series of cases against their political opponents. CBI clearly has become a 'Captive Bureau of Investigation' in the hands of the Modi government," Surjewala charged.

Reacting to the media reports, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet: "The BJP government uses the CBI to target key opposition politicians to intimidate and harass them... Who will Modi ji target next?"



The party contended that the abuse of these institutions by the BJP was denigrating their credibility and eroding the peoples' faith in them.

Furthermore, Congress alleged that the saffron party was spreading "malicious propaganda" to taint the image of politicians belonging to opposition parties and blamed some sections of the news media of being complicit in this.

"We have seen it in the past and recently too that the BJP indulges in malicious propaganda and fostering false cases against its political opponents - there is often a media trial, FIRs are leaked for primetime debates," Surjewala said.

"But in due course when the judicial process starts all such foisted cases fall flat and 'charged' are exonerated by the courts," he added, pointing to the recent Supreme Court judgments in the coal auction case and 2G spectrum allocation case.

Surjewala claimed that top Congress leaders, like Virbhadra Singh, former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, former finance minister P Chidambaram, were being persecuted by the ruling party over trumped-up charges.