Telangana’s ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi on Thursday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his proximity to Gautam Adani, asking the country to reject the “one-nation-one-friend government”.
The coordinated broadside, in Hyderabad and Delhi, came ahead of the Enforcement Directorate’s scheduled questioning of Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter and lawmaker K. Kavitha on Saturday in connection with the Delhi liquor scam.
Kavitha, MLC and former Lok Sabha member, said the “double-engine government” that the BJP dangles during state elections “actually stands for Pradhani and Adani Sarkar”. Her brother and Telangana minister K.T. Rama Rao was reported from Hyderabad as saying that Adani was the “benami of Modi”.
The Bharat Rashtra Samithi had during the first part of Parliament’s budget session vociferously demanded a discussion on the Hindenburg report that has alleged stock market manipulation and accounting fraud by the Adani group.
The party’s senior leadership has stepped up the attacks in recent days, echoing in many ways the Congress, which has kept its guns trained at the “Modi-Adani nexus”. Urging all Opposition parties to work together to defeat the BJP in 2024, Kavitha said: “Today, the land of Mahatma Gandhi, that of Satya, has become the land of lies. My message to the people of India is, don’t give a chance to one-nation-one-friend government. Listen to the Opposition.”
Without mentioning the Delhi liquor scam, she said she would respond to the ED summons. She said the questioning had been deliberately scheduled around her planned demonstration in Delhi for the passage of the women’s reservation bill, alleging diversionary tactics. “I will comply and cooperate with the ED as we understand their obligations towards the Government of India. But why is B.L. Santhosh (national general secretary, organisation, of the BJP) evading the law himself ?” she asked.
Santhosh is an accused in a case relating to an alleged conspiracy to poach on Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLAs in Telangana. Telangana is on the radar of the BJP, which has unleashed its “Modi se pehle ED (Before Modi arrives, send in the ED)” agenda of pre-election coercive politics.
“From last June, the Government of India has been constantly sending its agencies to Telangana. Why? Because Assembly elections are due this year-end,” Kavitha said. She said there had been more than 100 CBI raids, 200 ED raids and 500 income-tax raids in the state, all of them on politicians, particularly BRS members, or business houses that defied the BJP’s diktats
The Delhi liquor scam relates to allegations of corruption in the allotment of liquor trade licences in November 2021 to private players after state-run firms exited the business. The new liquor policy was withdrawn in July 2022. Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia has been arrested in the case.
