The BJP was once known as a party with a difference. What was meant was that its leaders were committed to their ideology of Hindutva and they would not keep themselves either left or right of their belief systems. In other words, it was a party of committed people who had a common vision of ushering in Hindutva. To be fair to the party, there was an element of truth in the saying.

What was said about the BJP could be said with greater vehemence about the Congress. The party became the weapon for the Indian people to fight against the alien rulers and bring about Independence. There were many at that time who felt comfortable serving the British as their hatchet men. 

For instance, the RSS was founded in 1925 by a former Congressman, who suddenly felt that he should devote his full time to converting Hindus into a militant group. For him Independence was less important; Hindu unity was more important. He followed the style and practices adopted by Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy.

Mahatma Gandhi knew that the Congress leaders would lose their commitment to non-violence and satyagraha, once they tasted power. That is why he wanted the Congress to be disbanded once the country got Independence in 1947. Over the years, the Congressmen, barring some exceptions, became corrupt and groups of people began leaving the party one by one. The deterioration happened over half a century.

In the case of the BJP, it did not need even seven years to become the most corrupt political party in the country. Forget Hindutva, it has become a party of wheeler-dealers, flush with money. No political party in the US or in Europe, other than those which belonged to the erstwhile Soviet block, has an office larger than the grand edifice the BJP has built in Delhi.

The sundry organisations linked with the BJP have acquired new buildings and landed properties in the national Capital, state capitals and even district headquarters. Today, no political party can come anywhere near the BJP insofar as their funds’ position is concerned. What is happening in the Kerala unit of the BJP is a case in point.

In India, abdication is what is admired. Buddha and Ram became great when the former left his palace and became a peripatetic Bhiku living on alms and the latter went on a 14-year vanvas to honour the promise his father had made to one of his aunts. In politics, where austerity is valued greatly, affluence can indeed be a liability.

It is true that the BJP does not count much in Kerala but ask the RSS leaders and they will tell you that the best units the RSS has are in Kerala. The BJP in Kerala is now realising how affluence can prove costly to a political party. 

It is no secret that the party’s coffers were overflowing with cash when it contested the recent elections in Kerala. Five years earlier also, the party had one of the best well-oiled election machineries in the state. In fact, no party could compete with the BJP when it came to spending. 

True, the Congress enjoyed the upper hand in the first few decades after Independence. Whatever advantages the Congress enjoyed earlier are now enjoyed by the BJP by virtue of the fact that it is in power at the Centre and in many states. That the BJP’s Kerala state chief K Surendran contested from Konni in the south and Mancheswaram in the north with a helicopter at his disposal was a reflection of the party’s money power. 

He even talked about forming a government in Kerala if the BJP secured at least 35 seats in a House of 140. His statement shocked even many of his own party supporters because they did not expect him to be so brazen. What he hinted at was his wherewithal to buy parties and MLAs to cobble together a government as the BJP did in many states like Goa and Meghalaya.

Of course, everyone took his statement as seriously as Metroman E. Sreedharan’s confident assertion that he would not shy away from the responsibility of holding the reins of the government in Kerala if the BJP was able to get the required support in the state legislature. Both statements earned a good laugh from the people from whose ranks came some great humorists like Kunjan Nambiar and Kunjunni.

In a state where modesty is considered a byword for honesty, the flagrant misuse of wealth did not go down well with the electorate, who recalled the spartan life the RSS leaders led in the past. Small wonder that the BJP’s flamboyant style of campaigning put off the voters even in the party’s strongholds.

And when the results came, it could not retain even the sole seat it had in the previous House, not to forget the drop in the overall vote share. For once, there is greater realisation among the people that the victory of O. Rajagopal in the 2016 Assembly election was on account of the sympathy the people had for him, as he had been contesting unsuccessfully ever since he joined the Jan Sangh, the forerunner of the BJP.

The developments concerning the party in the post-election period are far more devastating than on the day of counting. Just three days before polling, a car coming from Karnataka was intercepted at Kodakara near Thrissur and cash worth Rs 3.4 crore was allegedly taken away. The car belonged to or was hired by an RSS functionary, who was in regular touch with the party ’s top leaders, including Mr Surendran.

The wayside robbery would not have hit the headlines in the media but for the RSS worker filing a police complaint about the loss of Rs 25 lakh in the incident. The police have already unearthed more than Rs 1 crore from the criminal gang which was tipped off, obviously by a party insider to line his or her own pocket. Now, the party claims that the money was not its.

There is evidence that the incident was only a tip of the iceberg. The party is believed to have spent anything from Rs 30 crore to Rs 400 crore on the campaign in Kerala. In an interview, Mr Surendran claimed that all the party candidates were given money as permitted by the Election Commission. 

There are also charges that all the BJP candidates were not treated equitably and that a lot of money went into the pockets of some of the leaders. Nobody disputes the fact that Mr Surendran was the sole in-charge of distribution of funds. There are even hints that the helicopter was hired mainly to carry bags of high-denomination currency notes to all the constituencies. 

In fact, the classification of constituencies on the basis of their winnability was done to bluff the Central leaders and get more funds for certain constituencies like Thrissur from where film star Suresh Gopi contested.

During the campaign, a telephone conversation a senior lady leader of the party had with a middle-man revealed how greedy she was for money. At one point, she even told the person that she was not a mendicant who did not need money. Anyone who had heard her conversation would have been repulsed by her unabashed demand for money in strange circumstances. 

Needless to say, all this would have remained just political speculation but for a telephone conversation in which Mr Surendran is heard saying that Rs 10 lakh in cash would be delivered at tribal leader CK Janu’s hotel room at Thiruvananthapuram on the day Home Minister Amit Shah was in the city. It now transpires that the room was booked by the BJP.

Ms Janu, initially, demanded Rs 10 crore and five seats but she finally settled for one seat which she herself contested. Her colleague who acted as the intermediary between Mr Surendran and Ms Janu claims more than Rs 10 lakh was given to her. In fact, one reason why she fell out with Ms Janu is because she did not get a share of the “loot”. 

In the first bit of taped conversation she released, she is heard asking Mr Surendran for some money as her own financial condition was pitiable. Now she says that the money was needed for the party, not to meet her own needs.

As if all this was insufficient has come the report that the BJP paid Rs 2.50 lakh in cash to the BSP candidate to withdraw from the contest at Mancheswaram. It is worth recalling that the BJP chief had claimed at a Press conference that the party had not done any cash transaction and all the payments made were through digital means. 

There is a published picture which shows some BJP leaders, including a close confidante of Mr Surendran, at the house of the BSP leader when he was paid the money. Rs 2 lakh was given to him and Rs 50,000 to his mother. There was at least some gender justice!

What has given a twist to the story is that the BSP candidate also claimed that he was kidnapped by the BJP workers and forced to withdraw from the contest. This is a serious charge and the police have naturally filed a criminal case against Mr Surendran. What the two sides say cannot be considered the gospel truth. Only a thorough custodial interrogation will reveal the truth.

It is possible that the BSP person fell out with the BJP because he was not paid adequately for withdrawing from the contest. In Mancheswaram, Mr Surendran had lost by just 87 votes in 2016. In other words, if he had won 44 more votes, he would have been declared elected. That is why he did not want the BSP candidate whose name was also similar to his to contest by any means. 

In all the three incidents, police investigations have been going on and one can only hope that they would reach their logical conclusion and bring the culprits to book. Reports suggest that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is upset over the goings-on in the Kerala BJP. Can he absolve himself of the responsibilities?

On December 4, 2016, when he announced banning of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination currency notes, many accepted his initiative despite the hardship it caused to the people in the belief that it would cleanse the monetary system and rid it of black money. To give him credit, the NDA government has been promoting digital, instead of cash, transactions.

What Kerala witnessed is not something unique. In all the elections in the recent past, the BJP spent huge sums of unaccounted money. What it spent in Kerala is only a fraction of what it spent in West Bengal, which it wanted to capture by hook or by crook. There have, in fact, been allegations of misuse of the BJP’s money power for winning elections and “buying” MLAs. 

Since it is the ruling party, it can easily raise resources. According to a recent report, in 2019-20, the BJP received roughly Rs 750 crore in donations from companies and individuals, according to its contribution report submitted to the Election Commission. 

This is at least five times more than what the Congress party received (Rs 139 crore). The NCP got Rs 59 crore, TMC Rs 8 crore, CPM Rs 19.6 crore, and the CPI Rs 1.9 crore during the same period. The main beneficiary of the electoral bonds is also the BJP. In fact, it has been tailored to suit the party. Such transactions are through the banking system. 

Then, how does it have so much cash to distribute in a cloak-and-dagger manner? It is obvious that the party gets a lot of cash through illegal means. It does not redound to the credit of the party that rules the largest democracy in the world that it also deals in black money. There is a saying that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, especially so when it has access to tonnes of ill-gotten money.