‘Akin to raid on a party office’: ED action adds to Opposition unease

One of the recurring themes of attacks by Opposition parties against the Narendra Modi government since 2014 has been what they claim to be selective and deliberate targeting of their leaders by Central investigating agencies, especially the Enforcement Directorate (ED). On Thursday, with raids on political consultancy and election management company I-PAC in Kolkata, the ED went one step further.

It is the first time that a private election management company has come in ED crosshairs and its offices raided. And that too in a state where it is working with the party in government – Trinamool Congress – which is pitted against the BJP in Assembly elections that are just two months away.

While most of the Opposition parties have worked with I-PAC, its other big client now apart from the TMC is the DMK in Tamil Nadu – which, incidentally, is another ruling party in a state that is set to go for Assembly polls, with Bengal in March-April.

While I-PAC holds an expansive brief for the TMC, in the case of the DMK, it is strategising and planning its outreach and publicity activities, and has a 20-odd staff in Tamil Nadu working closely with a much bigger in-house team of the DMK first family.

Opposition leaders admitted unease over the ED targeting a consultancy shaping the election strategy of the TMC and involved in screening of its candidates, saying that it was like the agency searching a party office on the eve of elections. Searches were conducted at 10 premises associated with I-PAC on Thursday, six in Kolkata and four in Delhi, including the residence of I-PAC Director Pratik Jain.

While now a political consultancy working for Opposition parties, I-PAC, founded by Prashant Kishor, first grabbed the eyeballs with its steering of the successful BJP campaign in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, centred around Narendra Modi, that saw him come to power for the first time as Prime Minister.

Since then, I-PAC has worked with JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar in Bihar in 2015, during the time he had parted ways with the BJP; the Congress in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in 2017, including for then Congress leader and Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh; the YSRCP’s Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh in 2019; the undivided Shiv Sena in Maharashtra in 2019, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi in 2020 and 2025; the DMK in Tamil Nadu in 2021; and the YSRCP in Andhra again in 2024.

Its longest political assignment has been with the TMC, with which I-PAC has been associated since 2021, crafting its election victories in the then Assembly elections and later Lok Sabha polls. Kishor moved out of I-PAC after the last Bengal Assembly elections.

Even while targeting the Mamata Banerjee-led government for the raids, which were linked by the ED to an alleged coal smuggling scam, the TMC’s political rivals too questioned the timing of the agency’s raids. “There have been cases of corruption in West Bengal for several years now. But it has become a fashion for the BJP to send the ED first in election-bound states. If there was anything against this company… this company has been operating for many years… this ED raid and investigation could have taken place two years ago too. Why today?” Congress in-charge of the state Ghulam Ahmed Mir said.

“The ED now raids political consultants because it has failed to raid facts, truth or credibility. The raids on I-PAC in Kolkata are yet another chapter in the BJP’s playbook of coercion. When democracy is inconvenient, agencies are weaponised,” senior Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi said.

Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a trenchant critic of Banerjee, however, kept his focus on the TMC government. I-PAC acts as the TMC’s “eyes and ears” and is engaged in “political, unethical and conspiratorial” activities in West Bengal to ensure the party’s electoral success, he said.

The CPI(M), also a bitter rival of the TMC, called the raids stage-managed. “It may be a drama by the ED because, in the end, we never see the truth emerge. Even in the R G Kar medical College rape and murder, despite investigation by a Central agency, the truth never came out,” CPI(M) state secretary Md Salim said.

While other constituents of the INDIA bloc, including the DMK, remained silent on the raids, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav posted that the ED action was the first “proof” that the BJP was “losing badly” in the Bengal elections.

Beyond the state elections, the raids are set to reignite the Opposition’s persistent criticism that the BJP targets its opponents using Central agencies. In 2022, an Indian Express series on cases against prominent politicians in the country showed that 95% of cases involving politicians filed by the CBI and ED under the Modi government were against the Opposition, and initiated just ahead of elections in particular states.

Even the case in which searches were conducted on I-PAC premises on Thursday was registered by the CBI months ahead of the last West Bengal Assembly elections in 2021. It had summoned Rujuira Banerjee, the wife of Banerjee’s nephew and TMC No. 2 Abhishek Banerjee, for questioning.

In 2009, the NIA had arrested the much-wanted Maoist leader Chhatradhar Mahato while he was campaigning for the TMC for the coming elections.

The TMC has often been at the receiving end of ED action. In 2022, the ED arrested TMC leader and then Education Minister Partha Chatterjee in the school jobs scam case after recovery of a huge amount of cash from his home. In the same case, it arrested TMC leaders Manik Bhattacharyya and Anubrata Mondal, the latter over cattle smuggling. In 2023, the ED arrested TMC minister Jyotipriya Mallick in the PDS scam. In 2024, TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan was raided by the ED in connection with the case.  Several other leaders are under the ED scanner in these cases.

Even in Tamil Nadu, the ED raids have come before elections. Days before state polls in April 2021, Income Tax raided the premises of DMK chief M K Stalin’s daughter Senthamarai in Chennai.

A host of DMK leaders – some of them recently – have come under ED scanner ahead of the coming polls in Tamil Nadu as well. These include state Municipal Administration Minister K N Nehru (alleged scam in manipulation of tenders); Rural Development Minister I Periyasamy (disproportionate assets); Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji (cash-for-jobs scam, arrested in 2023); Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy (illegal mining); and Fisheries Minister Anitha Radhakrishnan (disproportionate assets).