The washing machine, it appears, is no longer a benign domestic appliance. It has, in a manner of speaking, become a utilitarian tool in the political arena. India’s Opposition has been quite vocal about the Bharatiya Janata Party’s propensity to weaponise Central investigative agencies against its political adversaries. The charge is not insubstantial. In 2022, an investigation by a newspaper revealed that an astonishing 95% of politicians who were on the radar of the Enforcement Directorate or of the Central Bureau of Investigation since 2014 belonged to the Opposition. But there, evidently, is a way out of their predicament. New data by the same newspaper now suggest that of the 25 Opposition leaders who chose to cross over to the BJP upon facing the heat from the agencies, 23 have managed to earn a reprieve. Three of the cases have been closed, while the proceedings in 20 others have effectively been put in the proverbial cold storage. The Opposition’s jibe at the BJP’s mighty washing machine, one that washes the taint off leaders accused of corruption as soon as they join the saffron party, is bound to get sharper upon these revelations. The data also blow torpedo-sized holes in the prime minister’s rhetoric against corruption. Since coming to power, Narendra Modi has not only vowed to rid India of the scourge of corruption but, in recent times, also vouched for the ED’s institutional independence. But the ED’s targeting of prominent Opposition leaders before the general elections, the amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act that widened the scope of the ED’s draconian powers as well as the revelation that several of the top donors to the BJP’s kitty in the electoral bond scheme happened to be on the ED’s scanners raise troubling questions regarding the impartiality of Mr Modi’s crusade against corruption.

There can be no argument against endeavours to cleanse politics. It is an urgent need given the centrality of money power in the political scheme. But the war against corruption must be fought on a level battlefield. The Opposition cannot be made to shoulder the blame alone especially since the BJP under Mr Modi has shown that it is not averse to embrace politicians with a chequered record. This kind of vendetta and double standards are suggestive of a stain that may be difficult to rinse even by that famed washing machine.