The Indian National Congress party says its bank accounts with 2.1 billion rupees ($25.3 million) in deposits have been frozen by the Income Tax Department months before the national elections.
The main opposition party on Friday called the move “a profound assault on India’s democracy,” adding that a tax court had allowed it to partially operate its accounts until Feb. 21, when it would hear the case.
Congress treasurer Ajay Maken told reporters that the party filed a complaint against the tax department after it directed banks to freeze funds in its accounts.
“Two days ago we received information that banks were not accepting checks issued by us. … We don’t have money to pay the electricity bills or to pay salaries to our employees,” Maken said.
The tax department’s action comes just weeks before the dates for the general election, which are due to take place in May, are announced.
It also came a day after the Supreme Court, in a landmark order, declared illegal a secret election financing system, called electoral bonds. The scheme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2017.
“When the accounts of the main opposition party have been frozen just two weeks before the announcement of the national elections, do you think democracy is alive in our country?” Maken asked reporters.
“Don’t you think we are moving towards a one-party system?”
Maken said the Rs 2.1 billion frozen by the tax department was raised by the party through crowdfunding and membership drives, adding that the dispute with the tax department was related to an issue dating back to 2018. 2019.
Maken admitted that the party had submitted its statements up to 45 days late, but insisted that it had done nothing to justify such a sanction.
“Today is a sad day for Indian democracy,” he said, adding that the party was appealing the decision and would organize public protests.
The power of Congress, once India’s dominant party, has sunk to historic lows in parliament and many states after Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.
Critics and human rights groups have accused the Modi government of using law enforcement agencies to selectively target its political enemies.
“The power-drunk Modi government has frozen the accounts of the country’s largest opposition party,” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge posted on X. “We appeal to the judiciary to save the multi-party system in this country and protect India’s democracy.”
Virendra Sachdeva, president of the BJP’s Delhi branch, said the Congress was solely to blame for the freezing of its accounts.
“It is unfortunate that a party as big as the Congress does not follow the government’s rules,” he told the Press Trust of India news agency.
“If you don’t follow the rules, then you have to face the consequences.”
Agencies ‘behaving like servants of BJP’
Friday’s announcement comes after numerous legal sanctions and active investigations against key BJP opponents.
Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, a descendant of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty that dominated Indian politics for decades, was convicted of criminal defamation last year following a complaint filed by a BJP lawmaker.
Gandhi’s two-year prison sentence disqualified him from parliament for a time until the verdict was stayed by a higher court, but raised concerns about democratic norms in the world’s most populous country.
Congress is a member of an opposition alliance that hopes to challenge Modi in this year’s elections. Other prominent figures in the bloc have also been the subject of investigation.
Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi Party and chief minister of the capital region of Delhi, has been repeatedly summoned by investigators probing alleged corruption in the allocation of liquor licenses.
This month, police arrested Hemant Soren, until then chief minister of the eastern state of Jharkhand and another leading figure in the opposition alliance, for allegedly facilitating an illegal land sale.
India’s main financial investigation agency, the Enforcement Directorate, has ongoing investigations against at least four other chief ministers or their families, all of whom belong to political opponents of the BJP.
The recent record of government agencies showed that they were “behaving as servants of the ruling party to intimidate the political opposition,” Hartosh Singh Bal of current affairs magazine The Caravan told Agence France-Presse news agency.
Other investigations against former BJP rivals who later switched allegiance to the ruling party have been dropped.
Polls suggest the BJP is likely to win a third straight victory in this year’s elections, in part because of Modi’s supremacist appeal to India’s Hindu majority.
Congress is also expected to slightly improve its voting position.
