BJP backroom boys must go beyond Vadra to scale up anti-corruption mood before election

File image of Robert Vadra arriving at ED office in New Delhi | Arun Sharma/PTI

This is not the first time that the Congress first family’s son-in-law Robert Vadra is in the news, especially for the wrong reasons. He was one of the main targets of the BJP in the run-up to the 2014 elections.

The important difference now is that Vadra is in the news when his wife Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has just entered the political arena ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Barely a few weeks after Priyanka was appointed Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh (East), her husband was grilled by senior Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials all through Wednesday and Thursday in a case of alleged money laundering.

In fact, barely half-an-hour before the Congress president’s brother-in-law entered the high-security premises of ED, son of another high-profile Congress leader and former finance minister, Karti Chidambaram, was questioned in connection with the INX Media case Thursday.

As expected, Robert Vadra has denied all the allegations and the Congress, with wife Priyanka saying that she stands by her family.

The ED’s questioning of Karti Chidambaram and Robert Vadra came close on the heels of British home secretary approving the extradition of another high-profile economic offender Vijay Mallya. As a result, corruption and a crackdown on corruption dominated social media trends and airwaves the last few weeks.

2014 & anti-corruption sentiment

In 2014, a massive anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare had charged up the pre-poll atmosphere. The pitched poll campaign by the BJP, a disillusionment with the government at that time and the PM, who was seen as lacking in assertiveness, and policy paralysis added to this atmosphere.

Congress president last year admitted that “issues with corruption” was one of the major reasons for the party’s defeat in 2014 elections.

“Internal fight in the Congress party, generational fight in the Congress party, an older vision, a newer vision… and those just collided. We were fighting an election (2014 general election), but we had this internal conflicts going on (sic)… We had issues with corruption. And that just came together,” he told a gathering in Malaysia.

Battle of perception

In the recent state assembly elections, the BJP and the Congress traded corruption charges against each other, particularly in Madhya Pradesh. But, corruption as an issue could not sway the results heavily in favour of any one party. The seat tally was almost equal. In Rajasthan too, it was a close finish and the BJP did better than what the Congress did in 2013.

So, will corruption really remain an important or rather the only election issue in 2019 as it did in 2014? Will the question “why so late in taking action against Vadra” haunt the BJP?

There is little doubt that Narendra Modi has strategically brought the issue of Congress corruption to the centre stage of election dynamics. The BJP is considered to be well insulated from corruption, especially at the top leadership level. This image and perception will certainly give an edge to the BJP in its election campaign. The public display of Robert Vadra being questioned by the ED and the general perception that the Congress’ first family greatly benefitted from corruption will have a great impact in the coming months.

Photographs of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra dropping her husband off at the ED office in Delhi have gone viral. She is in campaign mode, evoking memories of her grandmother being hounded by the Janata Party.

It would be, however, interesting to see how the Congress manages its strategy to deflect the issue of corruption by playing the card of ‘victim of vendetta politics’. The BJP backroom boys will also have to scale up the corruption issue to at least the 2014 level if they want to achieve the target of “ab ki baar, teen sow paar”. Seems to be a tall order, as of now.

The author is former editor of ‘Organiser’.