00:00In a startling accusation, leaders of India's largest opposition party, the Indian National
00:06Congress, alleged Wednesday that the United States Central Intelligence Agency and Israel's
00:12Mossad conspired to orchestrate their party's devastating electoral defeat in 2014.
00:19Speaking at a Constitution Day event in Mumbai, former Rajya Sabha M.P. Kumarketkar claimed
00:26that foreign intelligence agencies deliberately engineered the Congress Party's collapse
00:31from 206 parliamentary seats in 2009 to just 44 seats in 2014.
00:56Ketkar presented a mathematical argument.
01:08Had the party's upward electoral trend from 2004-2009 continued, Congress would have won
01:14approximately 250 seats in 2014 and retained power.
01:19Instead, the party suffered what Ketkar characterised as an engineered catastrophe orchestrated
01:26by Washington and Tel Aviv.
01:29Ketkar alleged that a game was launched ahead of the 2014 polls, with foreign intelligence
01:34agencies compiling detailed electoral data on Indian states and constituencies to ensure
01:40Congress would never return to power.
01:43According to Ketkar's allegations, the CIA and Mossad had strategic geopolitical motives
01:49for eliminating the Congress from Indian politics.
01:52He claimed both agencies believed that a stable Congress government or Congress-led coalition
01:58in New Delhi would resist foreign interference and limit their ability to implement policies
02:03favourable to US and Israeli interests in the region.
02:07Ketkar stated,
02:08If a stable Congress government or a Congress-led alliance government came back to power again,
02:14they would not have been able to interfere in India and implement their policies.
02:17Ketkar said,
02:18Ketkar said,
02:19The allegations suggest foreign powers preferred a majority government in New Delhi that would be
02:25more amenable to external influence, one that was specifically not led by Congress.
02:44The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, which swept to power in 2014 with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister,
02:52rejected Ketkar's allegations as baseless conspiracy theories.
02:57No independent evidence has emerged to support Ketkar's allegations.
03:02International election observers who monitored the 2014 Indian elections, Indian intelligence agencies
03:09and independent analysts have not reported any credible evidence of CIA or Mossad interference
03:15in India's democratic process.
03:18Ketkar's extraordinary allegation faces scrutiny from multiple fronts.
03:23First, the factual record.
03:25International election observers from the Election Commission of India
03:29and international monitoring organisations assessed the 2014 election as free, fair and competitive,
03:37with no evidence of foreign interference reported.
03:40Second, the logical problem.
03:42If the CIA and Mossad possessed the capability to rig Indian elections,
03:47they would have done so repeatedly across India's ten general elections since 1991.
03:52The claim that they specifically targeted 2014 strains credibility.
03:57Third, the political reality.
04:00Congress's electoral decline reflects documented domestic failures.
04:05However, Congress supporters counter.
04:08The party notes that the 2014 result was historically unprecedented in its magnitude.
04:14A swing from 206 to 44 seats represents an anomaly worth examining.
04:20They argue that foreign powers do engage in covert election interference globally,
04:25and India, as a strategic geopolitical player, could logically be a target.
04:31Congress contends that the lack of official complaints reflects India's political establishment's
04:37reluctance to acknowledge such interference publicly.
04:40Ultimately, political analysts observe that while Congress's domestic challenges are real,
04:46the party's raising of foreign interference concerns highlights broader anxieties about election integrity in the digital age,
04:54even if this specific claim remains unproven.
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