The second term of Modi Sarkar is off to a very poetic start, to put it mildly. Amit Shah completed the task another great Gujarati Sardar Vallabhabhai Patel set out to do with the abrogation of Article 370. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the very antithesis of Jawaharlal Nehru and an inheritor of Veer Savarkar’s legacy, is slowly, bit by bit, destroying the legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi Parivar that has held India back for so long.
However, nothing could have been more poetic than the events that transpired on Tuesday. Such are the stories legends are made of. In 2010, when P. Chidambaram was the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah was unceremoniously arrested and slapped with charges of murder, extortion, and kidnapping among others over the Sohrabuddin encounter case. A sitting minister in the Gujarat cabinet, he was jailed for three months before being granted bail. He was proven innocent later.
Even after Shah was granted bail, he was exiled from Gujarat and between 2010 and 2012, he could not visit his own state. All of this happened under Chidambaram’s watch. How the tables have turned today. Today, the senior Congress leader is on the run and is running from pillar to post to protect himself from being arrested after having allegedly committed a host of financial crimes. The chicken has finally come home to roost.
Not only Amit Shah, Prime Minister Modi, too, had to endure the transgressions of the UPA regime during his tenure as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. In March 2010, an SIT had grilled Modi for 9 hours in connection with the 2002 riots. Ultimately, the investigative agencies had to conclude that there was no evidence to suggest that he had, in any manner, aided or abetted the riots. While there is clear evidence of the transgressions of P Chidambaraam, there was none when then CM Modi and Amit Shah were hounded by a vindictive UPA government hell-bent to further the saffron terror narrative. What is interesting, is that even when Amit Shah and Narendra Modi were being hounded in false cases, they did not run. They submitted to the law of the land. Chidambaram, while is being prosecuted on valid grounds, is today on the run.
It appears as though Congress leaders do not believe that laws of the land apply to them as well. During the UPA regime, the Congress party unjustly used the state machinery to destroy the political careers of their opponents. Nine years later, when bail has been denied to Chidambaram on valid grounds, the party is crying political vendetta. The party appears to forget, ‘political vendetta’ is carried out against actual political opponents.
The Congress party isn’t even a competition to the BJP anymore, it is finished. Narendra Modi does not need to persecute Chidambaram for political gains, he was reelected the Prime Minister only in May with over 300 seats in the Lok Sabha. This isn’t about vendetta, it’s about justice. What the Congress party did to Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, was a political vendetta. The Gujarati-duo were on the rise and rise and the UPA government tried to use state power to thwart them. It is the definition of political vendetta.
Powerful politicians thriving under the umbrella of the Nehru-Gandhi parivar have long evaded the arms of the Law, now it is catching up to them. Senior Congress leaders have enjoyed special privileges for so long, equal treatment now feels like discrimination to them.
The manner in which Chidambaram has been absconding since yesterday does have a sense of poetic justice. Chidambaram, as Union Home Minister, persecuted Amit Shah. As the current Union Home Minister, Amit Shah is attempting to bring Chidambaram to justice. While the spider’s web still runs deep, Indians can now hope that the guilty will finally taste the bitter pills of punishment.
