Sushma Swaraj row: Cong's 'attack PM Modi' strategy is confusing, immature

A picture is worth a thousand rumours. Once upon a time in India, getting seen with Modi at IPL stadiums and parties was almost de rigueur; a symbol of passion for cricket under lights and whatever happened after they were switched off. Back then, at the peak of IPL madness, as Humphrey Bogart said in a different context, everybody went to Modi’s show. [caption id=“attachment_2298038” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. PTI[/caption] If Lalit Modi were to share his private album from those days with public, hundreds of politicians would figure in it; it would be a montage of India’s who’s who. So, when the Congress decides to attack the Prime Minister and his lieutenant Amit Shah by flaunting ‘incriminatory’ pictures of the two Modis, it reveals the party’s desperation to throw anything at him and hope that it hits. “Lalit Modi has a relationship with the PM and Amit Shah and they both must come clean,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, producing photographs of Lalit with PM Modi and Sushma Swaraj. “The picture is five years old when Mr. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat and also the head of the state cricket association with Mr. Shah being his deputy in the board,” BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar countered. Who is the Congress deluding? Doesn’t it know that Modi had a long list of friends in the UPA, he was a well-known public figure, a businessman; he had many mentors, including Sharad Pawar, before he was declared a fugitive? Will the Congress use the same argument against everybody who met the then IPL chief? By resorting to such specious arguments, the Congress is just sabotaging its attack on the Narendra Modi government, which is in trouble because of Sushma Swaraj’s ethical and political impropriety and the BJP’s defence of a fugitive. The Congress must be blind to ignore the contradictions in the BJP’s defence of Lalit Modi to dilute the issue with blunt attacks on the PM. Take this whole issue of Modi not being a convict, of the charges that he was framed by the UPA. On the contrary, Modi was hanged by a two-member BCCI committee comprising Arun Jaitely; the FM fought several cases against the former IPL chief and was at the forefront of the campaign to oust him from cricket administration. Sushma Swaraj and Yashwant Sinha were spearheads of the demand for a JPC probe into allegations of money-laundering through IPL in 2010. Now, the BJP is trying to defend Modi and argue that he was harassed by the UPA. The two Modis had once batted together for a Gujarat IPL team. According to the Outlook, in 2010 Narendra Modi had pressurized the Adanis into buying an IPL team for Ahmedabad. Eager to please the then Gujarat chief minister, Lalit Modi had allegedly tried to fix the bidding process to ensure Ahmedabad gets a team. But he was foxed by Rendezvous Sports, who went on to win the Kochi Tuskers franchise. It is unlikely that the PM was aware of the favours granted by Swaraj on ‘humanitarian’ grounds to a man wanted by the Indian government. It is possible that the foreign minister exceeded her brief and helped Modi get travel documents without consulting anybody in the government with the hope that nobody would notice the favour. At best, Modi can be criticized for being silent on Swaraj’s conduct, letting his party defending an accused and not being aware of his minister’s transgressions. Holding the PM responsible on the basis of old photographs, only underlines the Congress’ immaturity and confusion. Or, is this a case of the Congress trying to defend the minister the ‘snakes within the BJP’ are trying to harm by shifting the focus to the PM? In politics, an enemy’s enemy is, after all, a friend.