Election funding is highly centralised in BJP than in Congress: Prashant Jha

"You cannot keep uttering a lie in the hope of making it the truth," said journalist and author

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

during his session ‘The BJP’s Drive for Power’ at

Times Literature Festival

on Sunday.

In a discussion with author

Shantanu Gupta

and journalist Prashant, Thakurta lamented on how India’s multi-party democracy had been reduced to a Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi contest in the 2014 general elections. Three years into the ascent of the NDA government, the author-journalist said, “Never before in the history of this country has anyone felt marginalised. Never before has a PM appeared so much as a PM of Gujarat. Just as we can’t predict the future, we should also not question the intelligence of Indian citizens. You can't keep telling a lie and hope to believe it will become the truth.”

While researching BJP’s rise to power in his book, journalist-turned-author Prashant

Jha

also said that secularism, the way it is popularly used, is a word that finds little resonance in large parts of India. The panel also raised concerns over the ever rising increase in election expenditures and BJP’s emergence as the richest party of the lot.

Jha also said that funding in Congress party had largely been a decentralised activity whereas, in BJP, the process of collecting funds was highly centralised. In BJP, only a few people at the top positions controlled the collection, and depended on an equally small group of people to raise funds. Thakurta, who differed with Gupta’s defence of BJP, said that the perception of ‘no corruption in BJP’ has also taken a beating, in the wake of Vyapam and the latest expose on the Rafale defence deal.
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