BJP has Captured India’s Institutional Framework Preventing a Fair Political Fight, Says Rahul Gandhi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday claimed that the ruling BJP has made a “wholesale capture” of the entire “institutional framework” of the country, and this was preventing a “fair political fight”.

“There is a wholesale capture of the institutional framework of this country and absolute financial and media dominance.”

“To fight elections fairly, there is need of institutional structures, a judicial system that protects, a media that is reasonably free, also financial parity, and there is need of a whole set of structures that actually allow operating a political party.

“We are in a paradigm where the institutions that are supposed to protect us, do not protect us anymore. And the institutions that are supposed to support a fair political fight, don’t do so anymore,” he said in online interaction with Nicholas Burns, the Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a former US Under Secretary of State.

This was their second such interaction after one during the height of the pandemic.

On the electoral losses of his party, the Congress leader said: “Not just the Congress, the BSP, the SP, the NCP are not winning elections.”

To bolster his allegation, he gave the example of Assam EVM row, saying: “BJP candidates are running around voting machines in their cars. But there is nothing going on in national media.”

Gandhi also said: “When we were in the government, we had a feedback system which enabled effective governance. That feedback system is not there now. The current regime’s style of governance is centralised… it’s the idea that believes that centralised power understands everything.”

In the beginning, he said that the assassination of his father and former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 changed him.

He also said that he had always been accustomed to an “environment” of public service, and had been brought up with the idea that you cannot tolerate injustice.