Rahul accuses BJP of ‘wholesale capture’ of India’s Institutional Framework

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged on Friday that a “wholesale capture” of India’s institutional framework by the ruling dispensation has changed the paradigm in which opposition parties operate post-2014 as the institutions that are supposed to support a fair political fight do not do so anymore.

In a conversation with Harvard University professor and former US Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, Gandhi said in order to fight elections, there is a need for institutional structures, protection by the judicial system, a reasonably free media, financial parity and a set of institutional structures that allow his party to operate as a political party, but all this is not there.

“In Assam, the gentleman who is running our campaign (for the Assembly polls) has been sending me videos of BJP candidates running around with voting machines in their cars,” the former Congress chief said. “He is screaming at the top his voice saying look, I have got a really serious problem here. But there is nothing going on in the national media,” he added. There is a “wholesale capture” of the country’s institutional framework, Gandhi alleged. He claimed that there is absolute financial and media dominance by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).