Investigating agencies made three high-profile arrests even before the Narendra Modi government had completed 100 days in power. They took into custody Congress leader and former home minister P. Chidambaram, his Karnataka party colleague D.K. Shivakumar and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s nephew Ratul Puri.
Modi thus fulfilled a poll promise. “I had worked to bring the corrupt to the doors of jail in the past five years,” he had said in a rally in Gujarat in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. “If I am given another chance, they would be inside.”
The opposition had been taunting Modi about his anti-corruption drive, asking him why no one had been arrested yet. Modi, who rarely forgets a taunt and has a knack for converting it into political gain, has now responded. The political message to his constituency: Modi has acted decisively, whatever the legal outcome of the corruption cases be.
“This is vendetta politics,” said Congress leader Kapil Sibal. “The law is applied selectively to opposition leaders. Why no action was taken against Kuldeep Sengar [the BJP legislator in Uttar Pradesh accused of rape and murder]? Why was Mukul Roy saved in the Saradha scam case, or other BJP leaders who were accused in various cases allowed to go free? No action is taken against them.”
Central to Modi 2.0 is its image of being decisive. The massive mandate it received in May only prompts the government to go the full distance in fulfilling its promises. Abrogating Article 370, implementing the National Register of Citizens in Assam, bringing stricter anti-terror laws, criminalising triple talaq, merging public-sector banks and promising to spend 0100 lakh crore in infrastructure have been the showcase decisions in the first 100 days.
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