Moitra flagged electoral malpractices, such as voter disenfranchisement and biased campaign finance, giving the ruling party an unfair advantage. Voter disenfranchisement has reached epic proportions in India, she claimed.Another aspect is the largely-targeted exclusion of a “hated minority” by a prejudiced majoritarian State, creating a whole section of second-class citizens whose rights are less equal than others, Moitra said.This government has brought a “discriminatory” Citizenship (Amendment) Act that is openly violative of the right to equality before law, she added.Hitting out at the BJP-ruled states, Moitra said these governments are competing with each other in “bulldozer justice”, demolishing homes, usually of minorities, without due process of law.Moitra also attacked the BJP government over the abrogation of the provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir and said the right to free speech of the people of the region has been hampered.She also dubbed probe agencies, such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), as “extortionist departments” of the government.”In a cooked-up case against me, the CBI is wasting precious time looking for a scarf and lipstick that a friend gave me,” she said.Hitting out at the Centre over the issue of independence of the Election Commission, Moitra said, “Since this government has come in, two ECs have inexplicably quit before their terms ended.”She further alleged that the Lok Sabha polls held earlier in the year saw “blatant and egregious” violations by the BJP and the prime minister, which a compliant Election Commission ignored.Other institutional bodies have also been severely compromised, Moitra added.”It is crystal clear that this political executive, for the last 10 years, has systematically eroded democracy. It fails spectacularly on all three tests of constitutional accountability. Our Constitution is bleeding from a thousand cuts,” she said.Moitra also read out poems by Hilal Fareed and Faiz Ahmed Faiz to take a swipe at the Modi government.
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