A NEW FIGHT..... .. LALIT MODI VS. NARENDRA MODI

Defending 'victim' Lalit Modi: The BJP is rallying around LaMo to protect its ownComments

Lalit Modi should be a happy man today because it’s not Vasundhara Raje and Sushma Swaraj who thought that he needed the patronage of a foreign country to keep away from Indian law, but the BJP itself. Increasingly, the BJP seems to be asserting the claim that he is a victim.

Also lined up to support this interesting argument are celebrity-columnists such as Shobhaa De and Tavleen Singh. Shobhaa De wants her readers to “think of him as a victim and not the villain”  while Tavleen says that there are no charges against him, implying him that he broke no law and is not a fugitive as the media paints him. This is exactly what Lalit Modi himself is claiming.

Let’s first look at the bizarre chances that the BJP is taking. It was the party spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao, who came up with the idea that Lalit Modi was a victim of the previous UPA regime. Participating in prime time TV discussions, he had no qualms in postulating his victim theory. Even while asserting that his government will pursue the investigation against Lalit Modi, he echoed the latter’s theory that he was being hounded by the UPA because he exposed Sashi Tharoor’s alleged deals in the IPL.

Lalit Modi

Another regular spokesperson, Sambit Patra, also said almost the same thing. While he didn’t overtly support Lalit Modi’s or Rao’s claims of victimhood, he used a document that the evasive former IPL commissioner happily refers to - the Delhi High Court verdict restoring his Indian passport. On more than one channel discussion, Patra quoted the court order to repeat a central argument that Modi has been making - that he was not running away from the law and the Enforcement Directorate could have interrogated him through video conferencing.

What Patra, however conceals is the fact that his government hadn’t appealed against it in the Supreme Court, which meant that for the BJP, it was the final word. By not appealing against the order and by quoting from it only strengthens Lalit Modi’s argument. The simultaneous assertion that “we will certainly bring him to India” was clearly forked tongue.

The clever spins by Rao and Patra are classic BJP-double speak that seeks to express two contrasting arguments in the same breath - whether it’s Vajpayee’s stand on the nuclear bomb during his first term in office (we are the only ones with the courage, but others too were open), LK Advani’s regret over Babri Masjid demolition (an original accused still not cleared by the SC saying in 2005 that the masjid demolition was the “saddest day in his life”) or Narendra Modi’s commitment to secularism (speaking for secularism at UNESCO in Paris and mocking “secularists” later in Germany).

The BJP’s victim theory and Patra’s argument that he could have been questioned on video conferencing need a closer reading. As this report shows there are more than two dozen cases of financial irregularities and money laundering, and criminal cases filed against Lalit Modi by various investigative agencies in the country. Some other reports put this number at 20 and all of them are grave charges.