ED Attacks: MVA leaders to meet this week

'The BJP's real pain lies in the fact that all their skullduggery and chicanery has failed to cow down the Shiv Sena. They just cannot digest this fact.'
Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com reports on the MVA's feeble attempts to counter the government agencies's onslaught against some of its leaders.

With the Enforcement Directorate attaching 11 residential flats, worth Rs 6.5 crore (Rs 65 million) in Thane, allegedly owned by Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's brother-in-law Shridhar Madhav Patankar, the tentacles of the ED -- and other central investigation agencies, often charged with being deployed against non-Bharatiya Janata Party ruled governments -- seems to have reached the CM's doorstep.

While Thackeray has dared the Narendra Damodardas Modi government to engage in a one-on-one fight with him instead of targeting his family members and Shiv Sena leaders, it has apparently exposed the chinks in the armour of the three-party Maha Vikas Aghadi in politically dealing with the onslaught of central investigation agencies.

Senior leaders from the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress -- the three constituents of the MVA in order of importance -- while attacking the central leadership and the BJP over misuse of investigation agencies seemed all at sea about the MVA's strategy in tackling "regular harassment at the hands of ED, CBI etc, at the behest of the Narendra Modi government."

"Is the ED's jurisdiction is limited only for Maharashtra and West Bengal?" asks Arvind Sawant, the Shiv Sena's Lok Sabha MP from South Mumbai. Sawant was recently seen alongside the Sena's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut as the latter counter-attacked the BJP over its misuse of central investigation agencies against the MVA and its constituents.

"Let the Modi government introduce a law that automatically absolves all BJP-ruled states of any wrongdoing and limit the jurisdiction of all central agencies only to Opposition ruled states," says Sawant

"Given how whimsical and funny these people are, do not be surprised if any of their elected lawmaker talks of introducing such a bill in Parliament in the near future," Sawant quickly adds with a laugh.

Ask Sawant if his party leaders have a political way out to deal with what he calls "regular harassment at the hands of ED, CBI etc, at the behest of the Narendra Modi government," he pauses and shoots: "(Sanjay) Raut saheb had openly said that an ED officer is running an extortion racket in Maharashtra by targeting businessmen and all other political parties except the BJP. Has the central government or any BJP leader from Maharashtra accepted his challenge and asked the CBI and ED to investigate the extortion racket? How could a milkman from Haryana come to Mumbai and within a few years become worth Rs 7,000 crore (Rs 70 billion)?"

Raut, at a recent press conference, stated that he had given proof of an extortion racket being run by an ED officer from Mumbai and alleged that a BJP leader from Haryana hobnobbed with BJP leaders from Maharashtra and laundered their dirty money.

"Bharatiya Janata Party ha melelya manasachya taluvarcha loni khanara paksh aahe (The BJP, as a political party, will not think twice before eating the butter of the head of a corpse if it serves their purpose). I am speaking the bitter truth," says Sawant.

Senior Congress leader Manikrao Thakre and MVA Minister Jitendra Awhad spoke in the same vein. Their line of attack against the BJP remained restricted to the misuse of central investigation agencies, but seemed lost about the way how their respective parties could politically deal with the BJP juggernaut.

"Why do we need a strategy to expose the ugly face of the BJP's power-broking and misuse of investigation agencies? Do you think the people of this country don't understand how the BJP is undermining the independence of our investigation agencies?" asks Thakre.

"Every time they unleash the ED or the CBI or the IT, they are exposing themselves. The people of this country are sane enough to understand what these leaders are doing to destabilise non-BJP state governments in India," he adds.

"Our best strategy is to bring these acts before the people and leave it to their judgement," is Thakre's tame counter to the BJP's arm-twisting tactics.

Awhad, the MVA's minister of housing, says the three parties are planning to come together to devise a strategy against the "high-handedness" of the investigation agencies.

"The senior leaders of the MVA are likely to meet this week and discuss the issue of the high-handedness of central investigation agencies," reveals Awhad.

"We are not on the defensive," insists Awhad, when asked why the state government was not going after the ED official and BJP leader from Haryana named by Raut. "Unlike this political party (the BJP) we are a government elected by the people and can't act like aggressors, invaders or hot-headed individuals."

Ask Arvind Sawant why the BJP is targeting Chief Minister Thackeray and he says, "The BJP's real pain lies in the fact that all their skullduggery and chicanery has failed to cow down the Shiv Sena. They just cannot digest this fact."

"They are blinded by their greed for power and now they are eyeing the BMC (BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation, elections to which will be scheduled later this year)," adds Sawant.

"There is no way the seizure of some properties by the ED allegedly belonging to someone (the chief minister's brother-in-law Shridhar Madhav Patankar) will affect the MVA. Why will it affect the MVA?" asks Awhad when asked if the MVA was on the defensive after the ED attached properties of Shridhar Patankar, whose sister is Uddhav Thackeray's wife Rashmi.

"The countdown has already started," declares Chandrakant Patil, the state BJP president, and, who on February 10 had claimed that the MVA government would fall after March 10, the day the results to five state assemblies were to be declared.

"Have you ever seen a scared man (Uddhav Thackeray) in the position of political power betraying his fears openly?" says Patil when asked about the chief minister's challenge to the BJP asking them to take him on individually instead of targeting family members.