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The Hindu
The Hindu
National
The Hindu Bureau

BJP wants to keep Opposition leaders in jail to win polls: BRS

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has alleged that the conspiracy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is to ensure that no other party except it is allowed to exist. That is the reason why the ruling party at the Centre has been misusing the Central investigating agencies against opponent parties.

As the Modi government did not do anything for Telangana for the last 10 years, it is scared that BJP might face a backlash in the Lok Sabha polls if the issue became a poll issue, and therefore, it had brought out the ED cases to divert people’s attention, BRS leader Manne Krishank said here on Thursday.

Speaking to the media, he said that the arrests of BRS MLC Kavitha and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal were part of the BJP agenda to divert people’s attention from core issues during the elections. The ED had filed cases on the daughter of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, former Chief Minister of Jharkhand Hemant Soren and many others too.

Notices were issued to RJD, Shiv Sena, DMK, TMC and Samajwadi Party and ED, IT and CBI raids were being conducted in all States against the leaders of opponent parties so that the leaders of those parties spend more time in facing the cases rather than participating in the electioneering. By keeping the ED, IT and CBI cases alive the BJP was burying the debate on issues concerning people including on what the BJP Government did for the last 10 years.

Stating that that it was the ED that was running the elections in the country and not the Election Commission, Mr. Krishank said the leaders who were facing even ED cases would get immunity from arrest if they joined BJP. Those who were not succumbing to the BJP pressure were being harassed with repeated summons, raids and more cases.

The sole objective behind all these cases is to force Opposition leaders make rounds of ED offices instead of participating in election campaigns. The plan is to keep as many Opposition leaders as possible in jail and win the Lok Sabha elections. If BRS was non-existent, why are BJP and Congress taking its leaders to contest elections, he sought to know.

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