NAVEENA GHANATE
Hyderabad
The BRS came down heavily on Prime Minister Modi and his alleged nexus with the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
While MLC Kavitha fights the allegations against her with the ED in New Delhi, her brother, BRS Working President KT Rama Rao, lashed out at the ED in Hyderabad on Thursday.
Describing ED as an agency meant to “Eradicate Democracy,” KTR said the summons issued to MLC K. Kavitha in the Delhi excise policy case was a “Modi summons.”
Kavitha on the other hand said, “What’ll you get out of torturing people like us instead of focusing on rising prices and unemployment?”
KTR said Modi doesn’t have the guts to answer questions on the Modi-Adani nexus and that “Modi calls India, the mother of Democracy. But he is the grandfather of hypocrisy. Are all BJP people clean? Harassment, political vendetta and intimidation might work elsewhere for Modi. But he is playing with fire and I’m sure he will realise it in the days to come.”
KTR said the only liquor scam is the illicit sale of liquor in Gujarat which had killed 42 people.
He slammed Modi and the BJP-led government for ‘misusing’ Central agencies and said that Kavitha would appear before the ED and cooperate with the agency unlike BJP leader BL Santhosh, who tried to avoid questioning by the Telangana SIT in the case regarding the attempt to purchase BRS MLAs.
Stating that Central agencies have become puppets in the hands of the Modi government, KTR said the BJP-led Central Government has become synonymous with “unscrupulous rule” and “dishonest” investigating agencies.
He said that 95 per cent of the raids by Central agencies were on Opposition leaders. He said that only 23 of the 5,400 cases registered by the ED against opposition leaders ended in conviction in the last nine years.
Meanwhile, Kavitha said, “Telangana is now the hotspot for ED as Modi is visiting soon. In Telangana, under the Modi regime, 500+ IT raids were conducted on business houses. There were 100 CBI raids, 200 ED raids, and 500+ people were called by the NIA. Nearly, 15 BRS leaders were raided.”
“Yatho dharma thatho jayaha! Krishna’s birth couldn’t be stopped in jail and neither was Arjuna’s bravery in exile. Rama’s exile made him strong,” Kavitha said.
BRS leader KTR said that industrialist Gautam Adani has links with Prime Minister Modi. He said although the LIC and SBI lost Rs 13,000 billion, both Prime Minister Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman are silent on that.
KTR questioned the PM why he was silent about the allegations against him regarding his links with Adani.
“We are saying Gautam Adani is a proxy of Modi. Will he take a lie detector test? Does he have the guts to come in front of the nation,” he asked.
BJP’s double engine means one engine is Modi and the other engine is Adani. “Modi is the political engine and Adani is the financial engine,” he said.
Kavitha said that the double engine sarkar which actually stands for ‘Pradhani and Adani sarkar’ works in the interests of only a few and therefore the opposition is hounded for raising their voices.
“Why was the ED rushing to question me and chose the day before my protest? It could have been done a day later as well,” Kavitha said.
“When requests were made, well within the law, to the Enforcement Directorate to question me at my home, they refused. If they can do this to a political personality, imagine how much a commoner, especially a woman, would have to bear with,” she added.
She said she would fight for interrogation via video conferencing for all women and asked why the ED was trampling on her rights as a woman by not interrogating her at home or via video conference.
