The week when the polling began wasn’t a good one for the BJP. For one, the party ran afoul of the Election Commission on Narendra Modi’s biopic and a TV channel named after the Prime Minister. For another, the UP CM’s differentiation between “Bajrang Balis” or Hindus and “Alis” or Muslims came under the EC’s scrutiny. This was the second time that Yogi Adityanath had referred to the two communities in such terms which carry a subtext of aggressive strength where the Hindus are concerned and of being aliens in the case of Muslims.
Topping these setbacks was the SC’s decision to reopen the Rafale case. As the controversy about the aircraft drags on during the poll season, the BJP cannot but be on tenterhooks all the time as to what revelations may come out in the courts.
Already, the rejection of its claim the “stolen” documents presented to the courts about the deal by the petitioners lack validity has shown the govt in a poor light.
It is part and parcel of investigative journalism that the outing in the media of classified documents is based almost always on their acquisition by an intrepid journalist with the help of official “sources”. From this standpoint, all the celebrated revelations were based on “stolen” documents, whether they were the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the US government “systematically” lied on the Vietnam situation, or the Watergate scandal which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
While the impact of the Rafale affair will only be known over a fairly long time, the immediate focus will be on the ongoing poll process, especially on the performance of the EVMs. Already, there have been complaints from Andhra and elsewhere about them, with CM N Chandrababu Naidu being particularly upset, due to stiff challenge from the greenhorn challenger, Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress Party.
