NEW DELHI: India’s opposition Hindu nationalist party is reeling from a drink and drugs scandal that has tarnished its image as a guardian of public morality, analysts say.
In the scandal that has gripped the country, a son of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s late top strategist has been jailed after overdosing on drugs during a late-night party during which an aide also died.
India’s media has given reams of coverage to the scandal which broke barely a month after the BJP mourned the death of strategist Pramod Mahajan, touted as a future prime minister, who was gunned down by his brother in an apparent jealous rage.
“The latest events have brought into the open the decadent underbelly of the BJP which claimed to be the repository of ethical politics,” said Mumbai Daily News columnist Swapan Dasgupta who frequently writes on the BJP.
Rahul Mahajan, 31, was raced unconscious to hospital on Thursday after snorting heroin and quaffing champagne in an impromptu party at his father’s home in New Delhi, police have said.
His father’s personal secretary, Bibek Maitra, was dead on arrival at hospital after ingesting the same lethal cocktail, police have said.
Mahajan and Maitra had been due to travel the next day to Assam to immerse his father’s ashes in the holy Brahmaputra River as part of Hindu death rites.
Police now say mobile phone records suggest Maitra was a regular drug user. And as the scandal deepens, police have arrested a key BJP official on accusations of destroying evidence.
Rahul, who dabbled in film-making, had been tipped as a political heir to his charismatic father, renowned for his oratorical and organisational talents. Now he stands charged with consumption and possession of narcotics.
Plans were afoot to make him a youth wing leader as the BJP — which has been floundering since its 2004 defeat by the Congress party — sought to capitalise on the legacy of his father who had also been the BJP’s leading fundraiser, reports said.
“He is a very hardworking and able boy. He will go far,” BJP president Rajnath Singh said before the scandal.
The public spotlight fell on Rahul, who has denied wrongdoing, after the death of his father gunned down by his resentful brother. Police have said the brother had accused his well-known sibling of shutting him out of his life and humiliating him.
Rahul was a constant figure at the hospital as his politician father hung between life and death for two weeks and where BJP politicians flocked to show solidarity with the family.
The BJP leadership is how however rushing to distance itself from the scandal. “The party has nothing to do with it,” said BJP spokesperson Sushma Swaraj.
“Nobody in the BJP wants the facts to get out — that the powerful private secretary of a man they all now claim would have been prime minister one day” did drugs, said Hindustan Times editor Vir Sanghvi.
“(It) hardly reflects well on the party,” he said.
“An atmosphere of unwholesome recklessness permeated into the heart of the (fundraising) system he created ... and many of them (BJP members) gleefully plugged themselves into the network,” Sanghvi said in a column.—AFP
