A “political Covid” has infected the Indian polity and society, weakening the democracy, suggested Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday while reacting to US President Donald Trump’s criticism about $21 million in United States government funding for India – via global aid agency USAID in 2012 – for ‘voter turnout’, calling it a “kickback scheme”.
Vice President Dhankhar said he was “stunned” and said that the Trump revelations suggested that the “democratic process of this country was sought to be modulated” and “manipulated”.
The US Agency for International Development or USAID runs health and emergency programs in around 120 countries. Earlier this month, Trump called for USAID to be shuttered, escalating his unprecedented campaign to dismantle the humanitarian agency.
“To elect is the right only of Indian people. Anyone doctoring or manipulating that process is undermining our democratic values, subverting our democracy in the process, bringing us under servitude, subservience,” said Mr Dhankhar, addressing a Rajya Sabha Internship Programme in Delhi.
“I, therefore, from this platform call upon everyone: time has come to thoroughly get into this malaise, this political COVID infiltrating our society to destroy our democracy. All those involved in this sinister activity, who benefited out of this structured pernicious strategy, must be shamed and brought to book, fully exposed,” he said.
The latest that has come as a shocking expose is by the President of the United States.
He said that fiscal muscle was used, funds were pumped in to doctor and manipulate our democratic result. He has gone to the extent of saying, I must give my thought on it, that someone else… pic.twitter.com/yChX2bLVYh
— Vice-President of India (@VPIndia) February 21, 2025
The Vice President lamented that the Indian institutions are facing “structured taint”, which he said is a “facet of wokeism”.
“Our Constitutional functionaries are sought to be ridiculed, be it the institution of the President, Vice-President, or Prime Minister. These are not political posts, these are our institutions. People fail to show even minimum respect. My heart bleeds when the President of the country, the first ever tribal woman to hold that high office, is shamed, ridiculed, even when she performs her Constitutional duty in the joint session of Parliament,” said Mr Dhankhar, referring to Sonia Gandhi’s comments on President Droupadi Murmu after her address to a joint sitting of parliament at the beginning of the budget session.
Mrs Gandhi’s comment invited sharp criticism from the ruling BJP and the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
“The President was getting very tired by the end. She could hardly speak, poor thing,” Sonia Gandhi had told reporters.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan termed the comments in “poor taste”.
