ED: A tool of the ruling party

The siege of the Congress party office in Delhi and the official residences of party president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday was the latest action of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against Opposition leaders and parties.

Other leaders and parties, including Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut and Delhi minister Satyendra Jain, have been arrested recently on charges of financial misdemeanour. Others like P Chidambaram and D K Shivakumar have been raided and investigated by the agency in the past.

Parties whose leaders have been arrested or interrogated have claimed that they are innocent and are subjected to vindictive action by the government. But questions can be raised about the conduct of the ED and other agencies without defending any of the leaders who are under their scrutiny. No-one can give a clean chit to any politician, and everyone should submit to due process.

Read | ED raids jumped 27 times during 2014-2022 compared to 2004-14: Govt

But the circumstances of the conduct of these agencies show that the charge of their misuse by the ruling establishment is not all wrong. All governments in the past have used these agencies for political purposes. But it is very open and much more frequent now. It can’t be a coincidence that only those who belong to the Opposition parties are investigated. The ED is the main weapon being wielded now.

A number of Shiv Sena MLAs in Maharashtra had come under the ED’s pressure before they decided to join Eknath Shinde’s revolt against Uddhav Thackeray. In many cases, it has been observed that the investigations against such legislators end if they join the BJP. The argument that those who are investigated by the ED can prove their innocence in courts is unacceptable. Reputations are sullied and the process itself is used as punishment.

The record of the functioning of the agencies makes this clear. There was a 27-fold increase in the number of raids carried out by the ED during 2014-2022, as compared with the searches conducted between 2004 and 2014 when the UPA was in power. Parliament was told recently that ED cases rose by nearly five times, from 1,093 in 2014-15 to 5,493 in 2021-22. The number of cases was the highest in 2021-22. But only 23 convictions have taken place ever since the PMLA, under which the cases are filed, came into being. This would support the charge that most cases are politically motivated. The claim that the cases are based on facts and evidence does not hold water against this record. The ruling party’s question whether wrongdoers should be allowed to go scot-free just because they are Opposition politicians is only a rhetorical one. The claim that the government does not interfere in the work of investigating agencies does not convince anyone.