AA Edit | Misuse Of Central Agencies Spoils Spirit Of Federalism

It is the timing of Enforcement Directorate raids on a political consultancy firm that makes it open to question whether such action is just politically inspired. The timing of the act of censor certification being held up for a big-ticket film that is laden with political messaging again makes it so suspicious as to have spawned a whole gamut of conspiracy theories.

The employment of federal investigative agencies has a long and established pattern of political inspiration aimed at opponents as much as it has a built-up record of stark failures to prove guilt in around 99 per cent of the cases. This would straightaway suggest that the so-called investigation of money laundering is a routine ruse for acting to inconvenience opponents.

The use of the censor board to hold up films of a proven actor who had hundreds of films released as per the rules and regulations over decades is direly provocative at a time when the state of origin of the films is set to go to the Assembly polls in a few months. With political expediency trumping principles, the agencies or the government have never found the need to explain themselves, save in the most pedantic terms.

Settling political scores is not new, but using the censor board to obstruct a film’s release is a new low in Indian politics today. A film being held up is that of the new entrant to politics, Vijay, whose fledgling party TVK has been making waves in the Tamil Nadu political firmament. The whole exercise is to be seen as one to hold the actor to ransom for his political views and his stance independent of the two major alliances that rule Indian politics.

Given as she is to dramatisation of any event with an inkling of Centre-inspired vendetta politics, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee acted weirdly in rushing to rescue documents from the raided consultancy firm that she said had to do with poll strategy and a draft list of potential candidates, etc. It ill behoves a CM of a state to confront a federal agency with police presence during a raid and yet we are so inured to such political-driven action and counteraction that they may have come to be accepted as the norm in confrontational politics of the polarised kind that we are witness to currently.

For too long now, political opponents of the dispensation at the Centre have suffered at the hands of Central agencies that have evolved from having existed to the description of being a “caged parrot” to a biased weapon now in the hands of a power which can put those who come into its crosshairs in uncomfortable positions because it is on the cards that no politician can claim to have a whistle clean record.

The conviction rate in hundreds of cases that the CBI, the ED and other Central agencies like the DRI, have handled has been abysmal to the extent that their probing is always seen as a fishing expedition against political opponents than serious policing of fraud or checking the granting of undue favours or the committing of outright criminal acts defying the book of laws.

The rigmarole of probes being launched and raids run years later, mostly on the eve of elections, is a dead giveaway of what drives such action. And yet such exposition of political power goes on at both the Centre and to a lesser extent at the level of states as to point to how politics has regressed over time. The Marquess of Queensbury rules are not expected to be followed in politics. But, even in these highly polarised times, some sense of fair play must prevail in a federal setup in a nation that was, by definition, a Union of states.