On the eve of the expected announcement of the poll schedule we now suddenly have a series of major political developments. On the Electoral Bond issue, the Supreme Court has rejected the SBI plea for more time for submission of relevant data about the sale and encashment of electoral bonds. Desperate attempts by the Modi government and SBI to defer the disclosure of the Electoral Bond data till after the elections have failed, and the country now awaits the publication of the data by the Election Commission of India.
In a second major development, Election Commissioner Arun Goel who was appointed in an unusual manner in November 2022 and whose tenure was to continue till 2027 has resigned mysteriously. This has now set the stage for the Modi government to constitute a new Commission according to the newly passed Election Commission Appointment Act. On 15 March when the ECI has been mandated by the Supreme Court to bring the Electoral Bond data into the public domain, Narendra Modi will be filling the vacancies in the ECI with his handpicked choices.
On 11 March when the nation was waiting for the Supreme Court verdict on the SBI plea for extension of the deadline for furnishing Electoral Bond details, the Modi government notified the long-awaited rules for implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. The Act had been passed on December 11, 2019 and it took the Modi government fifty-one months to notify the rules! It seems clear that the government had saved the notification for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in order to polarise the electorate on communal lines and divert public attention away from the core issues on which the government stands thoroughly exposed.
The surprising replacement of Manohar Lal Khattar as Haryana CM by Nayab Singh Saini just before the Lok Sabha elections and the continuing clamour for dissolution of Bihar Assembly to pave the way for simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Bihar indicate that more conspiratorial manoeuvres may well follow in the coming days. All these desperate moves and manoeuvres clearly indicate that behind the tall talks of a 400-plus majority, a jittery Modi regime is trying every trick to hold on to power in the face of mounting anger of the people.
On the Electoral Bond issue, it may take some time for experts and investigative journalists to track the exact donor-recipient link, but the very fact that the SBI tried its level best to hide the Electoral Bond details and parted with the information only after the Supreme Court threatened to initiate contempt proceedings against it is itself a huge indictment of one of the BJP's biggest current scams. No wonder sections of vested political and corporate interests are still trying to stop the ECI from disclosing the Electoral Bond data to the public. From persecution of MPs and journalists exposing and challenging the Modi-Adani nexus to these desperate attempts to defy the Supreme Court order on Electoral Bond disclosures, the Modi government has been caught mired in massive economic and political corruption.
On the CAA, the BJP is again misleading the people by presenting it as an act to grant citizenship to deserving applicants and not a tool to deny citizenship to any. Nothing could be a bigger and more blatant lie. At the time of the passage of CAA four years ago Amit Shah had clearly said that CAA was just a precursor to a nationwide NRC. The NRC experience in Assam has already exposed the vulnerability of the poor and people without adequate documentation cutting across linguistic and religious communities to failing the NRC ‘test’. At the same time, the CAA remains a sinister communalization of citizenship which fundamentally violates the secular principles of the Constitution. In recognition of this the Shaheen Bagh equal citizenship movement against the CAA conspiracy had started acquiring nationwide broad-based support before the Covid pandemic intervened and the BJP succeeded in orchestrating communal violence in Delhi to suppress the movement and arrest some of the leading activists on trumped-up charges.
We must rebut the BJP's polarising and misleading propaganda over the CAA and alert the people against the disastrous implications of the CAA-NRC package. The people who are being promised citizenship under the CAA will first have to accept themselves as illegal immigrants and few can present the documents needed to pass the CAA test to secure the illusory promise of citizenship. It is yet another cruel Modi jumla or false promise to play with the plight and sentiment of the people who had to migrate to India and face so much hardship and deprivation to pick up the thread of life. In the name of delivering belated justice, the CAA will only disrupt their lives and throw them back into a state of uncertainty and insecurity.
The people of India who have successfully seen through serial Modi jumlas and withstood Modi-led serial disasters from demonetisation to lockdown to build powerful united struggles like the farmers' movement for legal guarantee to MSP, employees' movement for restoration of the Old Pension Scheme, youth movement against privatisation and contractualisation, scheme workers' movement for recognition of their work and better wages and the Dalit-Bahujan movement for caste census and expansion of reservation must firmly reject the polarising CAA-NRC ploy. The time has come to foil every conspiratorial manoeuvre of the Sangh brigade and throw out the Modi regime by making every vote count.
