In a war, all concerned use deception, force and all manners of tactical moves, and all manoeuvres are justified. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as the last eight years have shown, has ruthlessly pursued this and grown by defeating its opponents and tricking its allies.
In its political battles since 2014, the BJP has usually come up trumps, but the party's top brass met its match in three states - Maharashtra, Bengal and Delhi and by Uddhav Thackeray, Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal.
Thackeray fought the Assembly elections as a junior ally of the BJP but then outsmarted it by joining the rival camp to manage the chief minister's chair. After a jolt in Bengal in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Mamata Banerjee knocked out the rising BJP in the Assembly elections in 2021 through smart politics. Kejriwal outwitted the BJP in Delhi and decimated the erstwhile NDA partners - the BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal - in the Punjab Assembly elections earlier this year.
And now, we see a sudden spurt in the Enforcement Directorate operations in Delhi, Maharashtra and Bengal targeting leaders of Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). It started with AAP's Satyender Jain, moved on to Partha Chatterjee of the TMC, and subsequently Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena.
It isn't that these politicians are being probed without any basis. And it is for the courts to decide their fate. But, we understand that in current times it would be a struggle to find politicians with all their financial dealings above board. However, political bosses decide who gets targeted and who doesn't. This is as true of the CBI and ED as about state police forces.
Political bosses decide the timing too. In Bengal, several cases allegedly targeting the TMC top brass (Sharada, cattle smuggling, coal smuggling and post-poll violence) are on for years or months, with little progress made. The teachers' recruitment scam is too fresh compared to other cases, as it was handed to the CBI just in the middle of June.
However, the ED raided and arrested Partha Chatterjee after Rs 21.9 crore cash was recovered from his aide Arpita Mukherjee's house on July 22, within weeks of central agencies taking charge of the case. The Sena's Raut has been arrested in a more than a decade-old case, and the case of AAP's Jain is six years old.
The question is why the central agencies have suddenly woken up from their stupor. The answer lies in the arena of politics. The BJP won an impressive number of 303 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, securing a second consecutive majority in the Lok Sabha. It was an incredible feat, for not only did the BJP taste such success for the first time but also because since 1984, no other party could score 272 (out of 543) or more in Lok Sabha elections.
To keep its record shining, the BJP needs to secure a majority for itself again in 2024. Otherwise, even if it comes back to power, it will not only face impediments and uncertainties in running the government, political challenges will increase as an impression will go around that the party's graph has begun to dip.
Therein come some unfavourable calculations for the party. In a way, it maximised its electoral reach in 2019 as it mostly swept the seats on offer in states it either had a significant presence or dominated. It needs to repeat it to get a third consecutive majority in 2024.
But Thackeray, Banerjee and Kejriwal stand in the way. These three could not only ensure the BJP's and the NDA's tally might come down, but if they all manage to come out with flying colours, they may play a crucial role in pushing the BJP below the simple majority mark of 272.
Thackeray is a factor in Maharashtra's 48 seats, of which the BJP and Thackeray-led Sena combination won 41 in 2019. The birth of the Maha Vikas Aghadi has altered the scenario in Maharashtra. Even if the BJP performs well, its ally Eknath Shinde-led faction of the Shiv Sena cannot bring in the total vote of the Sena. So the BJP and its ally's tally may go down, theoretically, by 20 seats in Maharashtra.
In Bengal, the BJP won 18 of its 42 in 2019. But in the 2021 Assembly polls, it had led only in five of the 42 LS seats. In subsequent bypolls, the BJP has performed worse. The BJP, therefore, stares at the prospect of losing as many as 15 seats in 2024 in Bengal. Similarly, Kejriwal can not only beat the BJP in Delhi (7 LS seats) but may well make NDA slide in Punjab (from where NDA won 7 out of 13 seats).
With Maharashtra (48 LS seats), Bengal (42), and Delhi+Punjab (20), the parties that the triad of Thackeray-Bannerjee-Kejriwal lead, influence over 108 seats, or a fifth of the Lok Sabha seats. Of these, the BJP and its allies won 73 in 2019. The BJP needs to hold on to at least two-thirds of the number this time to ensure a majority for it and a rock solid number for the NDA.
Thus, in all likelihood, the ED and CBI will intensify their actions to demoralise and destabilise the rivals of the BJP in Bengal, Maharashtra and Delhi.
(Diptendra Raychaudhuri is a journalist and author based in Kolkata)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.