In a stunning allegation that has sent ripples through the political landscape, senior Congress leader and former Member of Parliament Kumar Ketkar has claimed that foreign intelligence agencies, including the American CIA and Israel's Mossad, played a pivotal role in engineering the Congress party's catastrophic defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The Constitution Day Revelation
Ketkar made these explosive claims while addressing a gathering on the occasion of Constitution Day, November 26, at the Maharashtra Congress headquarters, Tilak Bhavan. He articulated a theory that challenges the conventional understanding of the party's dramatic electoral collapse, where its tally plummeted from a robust 206 seats in the 2009 elections to a mere 44 seats in 2014.
The veteran leader expressed profound disbelief at the scale of the defeat, stating he did not believe the result then and does not believe it now. He acknowledged public dissatisfaction with the Dr. Manmohan Singh-led government but argued it was insufficient to explain such a seismic shift in parliamentary representation.
A Theory of Foreign Intervention
Ketkar proposed that a specific set of powerful international organizations foresaw that their strategic interests would be hampered if a Congress-led government returned to power. "Among the few organizations that understood this, one was the CIA and the other was the Mossad," he alleged during his speech.
He further claimed that these agencies predicted a Congress victory would obstruct their "military-industrial policies" in the region. To prevent this outcome, Ketkar alleged, a concerted effort was launched to ensure the party's seat count did not increase in the 2014 polls, effectively stopping its momentum from the previous two elections.
The Alleged Modus Operandi
According to the former MP, the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, was particularly instrumental. "Mossad created the entire structure for this," he claimed, urging the audience not to underestimate the agency's capabilities. He portrayed Mossad as a highly efficient organization that conducted meticulous research into the Indian electoral process.
"Mossad studied the elections and each constituency in detail. Both CIA and Mossad carry minute data of every Indian constituency," Ketkar asserted, suggesting a deep, data-driven operation was at play.
Reflecting on the Congress's performance in the preceding elections, Ketkar painted a picture of what could have been. He highlighted the party's growth from 145 seats in 2004 to 206 seats in 2009. Had this trend continued, he argued, the Congress was on track to comfortably cross 250 seats in 2014 and form the government once again. The alleged interference, he claimed, was the decisive factor that shattered this trajectory, leading to one of the most significant electoral setbacks in the party's history and denying it even the post of the Leader of the Opposition.
