Sengol to Senthil, it’s the same politics

From Sengol to Senthil, the politics is the same.

SeIt is the same politics that the Centre is practising in Tamil Nadu, and it is about making an entry into the state which has largely denied it to the BJP so far. If Sengol was about power and was meant to reach out to the people of the state with a political invention and high drama in parliament, the arrest of the state’s Power Minister Senthil Balaji also conformed to the Centre’s new political convention, creating some drama meant for the state’s spectators.

The new convention is the use of central investigating agencies against leaders of opposition parties and their associates, apart from other critics and dissenters. The Enforcement Directorate entered the state secretariat and took the minister through 18 hours of raids and grilling without a break, to finally arrest him at midnight on charges of corruption and money laundering. He now finds himself in hospital, needing a heart surgery. 

Read | Senthil Balaji said he was treated 'badly' by ED officials: Human rights commission member

The charges against the minister are not new. They date back to his tenure as a minister in the AIADMK government during 2011-15, and might need investigation. But procedural questions and issues of propriety have been raised about the raids and the arrest, and they are relevant and need answers. Police investigation should not be made political theatre and sensationalised with long raids and midnight arrests with a filmi touch. It is no surprise that there is a melodramatic response to it. Senthil Balaji had joined the DMK and is influential in the state’s western region, which the BJP has identified as a growth area. The AIADMK, with which the BJP has had political and electoral ties, also has a good presence in the area. So, it is no surprise that Senthil has become a target of attack. His arrest is also seen as an attack on Chief Minister M K Stalin, who is a leading light of the emerging Opposition line-up against the BJP. 

Corruption should be investigated and acted upon, but selective targeting of corruption is also corruption. No government can claim political and moral high ground on corruption when it picks and chooses its targets, acts only against those who are against it and shields its own. That is corruption of politics and morality of a high order, and makes all talk and actions against corruption essays in political convenience. In the process, governance is weakened and degraded because a compromised and politicised investigative system loses its strength and credibility. Senthil may be corrupt or not, and if he is corrupt, he should be punished. But now, like the Sengol, he is a symbol, picked up and being paraded for political impact.