It was held that PM Modi’s speech was “purely election propaganda for cornering the opponent” and that the allegations made in the complaint were far-fetched.
The Lokpal of India on Friday refused to entertain a complaint against Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi over allegations that they received black money from India’s top industrialists.
The Lokpal held that the allegations against the PM were “ex-facie far-fetched”.
The complaint raised issue with Modi’s speech during a campaign rally at Telangana’s Karimnagar on May 8, where he had asked whether the Congress was receiving “tempos of cash” from billionaire Indian industrialists Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani.
The anti-corruption body justified the tone and tenor of the speech in question, describing it as bordering on ‘surmising and conjecturing’, and being ‘purely an election propaganda for cornering the opponent by posing a questionnaire to him based on assumed or so to say fictional facts’.
The Lokpal held that the speech in no way made out a case of corruption on the part of the Prime Minister.
“This statement may be akin to having indulged in shadow boxing. By no standards, however, such a suppositional questionnaire can be regarded as having revealed any information replete with verifiable allegations of corruption against another public functionary warranting intervention by the Lokpal.”
The order was passed by a full bench of Chairperson Justice (retired) AM Khanwilkar and Judicial Members, retired Justices Ritu Raj Awasthi, L Narayana Swamy, and Sanjay Yadav, along with Members Sushil Chandra (former Chief Election Commissioner), Pankaj Kumar and Ajay Tirkey.
The Lokpal junked the contention that PM Modi did not act on information from the intelligence wing of the government in relation to the allegations made.
“This allegation is ex facie farfetched…For, there is no such reference in the text of the subject speech that the speaker had received or gathered such factual information from the intelligence sources either formally or informally. In our opinion, even this allegation cannot take the matter any further, considering the text of the speech – being entirely an expression of surmise and conjecture or hypothetical questionnaire.”
The complaint with respect to PM Modi was, thus, dismissed at the threshold for being ‘untenable’. It was also held as being devoid of merit and based on non-tangible material.