On April 13, while addressing an election public meeting in Trichy in Tamil Nadu, BJP president Amit Shah called the Jayalalitha government the “most corrupt” in the country and asked the voters of the state to oust it in the elections that were held on May 16.
The people of Tamil Nadu did not buy into Amit Shah’s certificate and returned the AIADMK to power. It was the BJP that failed to open its account in the Tamil Nadu assembly.
Shah is not once bitten, twice shy. In Warangal on Saturday, he repeated the charge, this time bestowing the “most corrupt” tag on the K Chandrasekhar Rao government in Telangana. But unlike Tamil Nadu where he did not elaborate on the reasons why he called Jayalalitha corrupt, Shah went into specifics in Telangana.
Accusing KCR of diverting money that is given by the Centre for developmental projects to “buy MLAs from other parties”, Shah said the TRS government had diverted Rs 90000 crore so far. That is a very serious charge and Shah would be expected to back his allegations with some documentary evidence or else, this would be seen as yet another one of the BJP jumlas.
The bouncer bowled by Shah raises some important points. First, a senior functionary of a national party is saying that money plays a role in encouraging defections from one party to another. Are we to believe the same happened when almost the entire Congress legislature party defected to a front propped up by the BJP in Arunachal Pradesh this week? So far, 27-odd legislators from the TDP, Congress, CPM, YSR Congress, BSP have shifted allegiance to the TRS in the last two years. Rs 90000 crore to purchase these many legislators, Mr Shah?
Two, if such a huge amount was indeed `siphoned off’, as Shah seems to suggest, what are the central agencies doing? Surely some kind of audit will take place to see to it that works are done. The TRS government should immediately lay bare the break-up of the amounts received and works done. No one is suggesting that corruption does not exist and it will be good to bring out the facts in the public domain.
Three, when Prime minister Narendra Modi came visiting in August, KCR went overboard in praising the NDA government as a zero corruption administration. Those in the TRS expecting a `I scratch your back, you scratch my back’ have been disappointed by Shah’s blistering attack.
