New Delhi: Supreme Court advocate Ajay Agrawal, the BJP leader who contested against Congress’s Sonia Gandhi from Rae Bareli in 2014, has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi making certain serious allegations against him.
Accusing Modi of being ungrateful, Agrawal said, “I disclosed the details of a meeting held during the Gujarat elections at the residence of Mani Shankar Aiyar in Jangpura on December 6, 2018, between former Vice-President Hamid Ansari, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani authorities. If I had not done so, the BJP would probably have lost those elections. ‘
He said, “PM Modi later linked this meeting with national security in his election rallies and referred to it in his speeches. Despite being near defeat, the BJP was successful in winning the elections.”
Agarwal, who contested from Rae Bareli against Congress leader Sonia Gandhi in 2014, is the BJP leader who has got the highest number of votes from there. However, this time he has not been given the Rae Bareli ticket.
He claims that the top leaders of the Sangh also acknowledge his role in BJP winning Gujarat elections.
To his claim, Agrawal has released the audio of an alleged phone conversation with RSS leader Dattatreya Hosabale. In the recording, Hosabale is heard saying that Agrawal’s disclosures (about Manmohan Singh’s meeting with the high commissioner of Pakistan) won the BJP Gujarat.
आरएसएस के सह-सरकार्यवाह श्री दत्तात्रेय होसबोले व रायबरेली लोकसभा से 2014 में भाजपा प्रत्याशी रहे सुप्रीम कोर्ट एडवोकेट अजय अग्रवाल की ऑडियो क्लिपिंग |https://t.co/Q9XHQaCWye
— Ajay Agrawal (@AJAY_K_AGRAWAL) April 10, 2019
In his letter to Modi, Agrawal claims that if there are fair elections, the BJP may be reduced to only 40 seats in the country, instead of the 400 it has been claiming. “Be prepared for this to withstand the shock,” he writes.
Agrawal says, “I have known Prime Minister Modi for 28 years and we have eaten together hundreds of times at the [BJP’s] Ashoka Road office. Despite this, there was a double standard in the way I was treated.”
“By getting the highest number of votes, 1,73,721, for the BJP in Rae Bareli’s election history, I increased the party’s reputation in the Gandhi family’s fortress. In the pre-2014 elections, BJP candidates got very few votes,” his letter says.
He said, “For example, in the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituency, BJP candidate Girish Chandra Pandey got only 31,290 votes in 2004, while in the by-elections of 2006, BJP candidate Vinay Katiyar got only 19,657 votes. In 2009, R.B. Singh also got only 25,444 votes.”
He said, “Even then, a candidate with a tainted image has been given the BJP ticket from Rae Bareli. My claim is that the party candidate will not get more than 50,000 votes.”
He alleged that L.K. Advani was sacrificed politically in order to win the Gujarat assembly elections.
Agrawal said, “The people of the whole country wanted that the honourable L.K. Advani should be made the president. But when the signs of defeat in Gujarat were visible, then the traditional Congress voters from the Koli community were wooed by making Ram Nath Kovindji the president.”
He also claimed that after the formation of the government in Gujarat, “Three senior BJP officials cursed me for helping the party form government. They said why did you make the mistake of making the government for them in Gujarat, the whole party (BJP) was awaiting for these people (Modi and Amit Shah) to lose the Gujarat elections, so that their arrogance would be broken.”
“They further said that I may have done a big job for him (Modi), but he will not remember me.”
In his letter to Modi, Agrawal said, “During demonetisation, I tried many times to get your attention with my letters and talk about corruption taking place on the ground. But instead of investigating, you made me the focus of your anger.”
He said, “You also use other [party] workers like me as slaves, and we work 24 hours a day, leaving our homes, in your scams and yet are not given the respect we deserve.”
Agrawal alleged, “You (Modi) are the most intelligent person in the country and you do not need any advice or help from anyone. That’s why you enforced demonetisation without consulting anyone and when the government was not ready, meaning that poor people were forced to wait in lines and even die there.”
He said, “You had hoped that at least Rs five lakh crore would not come back and that would become the income of the government, but 99% of the money came back. There was a large number of fake notes in that, which banks connived with some people to deposit. No investigation or explanation has been given till today.”
When questioned by The Wire, Agrawal said, “There is no information on BJP workers rigging the demonetisation process, but the decision itself was very stupid.” On the question of resigning from the party, he said that the party does not belong to anyone, and he is not going to leave.