Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray sees BJP plot, ED disagrees

Mumbai: After Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray’s statement about the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) being out to finish off his party in Maharashtra, BJP National President JP Nadda confirmed his fear on Monday. Speaking on the sidelines of the party’s National Executive Meeting Nadda said that all regional parties including Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar, Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, Biju Janata Dal in Orissa, YSR Congress party in Telangana and other parties in Tamil Nadu are either finished or, on the verge of being eliminated from Indian politics. Thackeray has also asserted that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is being used as a tool to ensure this political outcome, and that his loyal party MP Sanjay Raut has fallen victim to this very political gambit.

The Sena chief is partly right (as Nadda’s assertions indicate). However, ED officials insist that they are scrupulous as an enforcement agency involved with central revenue intelligence. An ED source says, “In 2017, BJP leaders Mangal Prabhat Lodha and subsequently Mohit Kamboj were also summoned to the ED office in Mumbai for questioning over some foreign remittances. At the time, their political party was in power both at the Government of India and Maharashtra levels. Back then, it was not cited as political vendetta.”

The officer added, “Unlike the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) that focuses on ensuring evaded revenue collections are duly paid even on pain of arrest, the ED has a stronger role to play. It is an enforcer against money laundering.” According to the ED officer, the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) introduced in the 1990s were replaced by the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) in early 2002 and subsequently by the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). “As far as some individual cases are concerned (like Sanjay Raut’s), they do not suddenly come up and have been built up over a period of time. We need adequate and substantial time to create the documentation of case papers. It does not happen overnight,” he noted.