India’s opposition accuses Modi of freezing accounts

INDIA’S main opposition party said the government had frozen its bank accounts yesterday, leaving it without funds to compete with the ruling party in next month’s national elections.

“Our entire financial identity has been erased,” said Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Party leader and scion of the family that dominated Indian politics for decades after independence.

“We have no money to campaign. We cannot support our candidates. Our ability to fight elections has been damaged.”

Several of the party’s bank accounts were frozen in February because it was allegedly late filing tax returns. The party claims the sanctions are politically motivated, to prevent it mounting a challenge to prime minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“Last week, we received another notice from the tax authorities that dates back to our filings from 1995-96,” Mr Gandhi told reporters in New Delhi. “We don’t even have money to print publicity material.”

In a rare public appearance, Sonia Gandhi, a former Congress chief and Rahul’s mother, said the move was “part of the systemic efforts to cripple” the party. Nearly a billion Indians will go to the polls in a month-and-a-half-long election starting on April 19, the largest democratic exercise in the world.

India’s credentials as a democracy have come under scrutiny, with critics accusing the government of politicising the justice system. The country’s main financial investigation agency, the enforcement directorate, has launched inquiries into the chief ministers or their families in at least five states. All of them are political opponents of the BJP.

Mr Gandhi criticised “institutions which are supposed to protect the framework of democracy” for not speaking up, singling out the election commission. He added: “There is no democracy in India today.”

Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress’s president, said the lack of funds had made it “helpless” ahead of the poll and added: “There is no level playing field.”

The BJP is nearly 10 times richer than Congress.

In 2017 Mr Modi introduced contentious electoral bonds that permitted unlimited anonymous donations.