The Enforcement Directorate registered 193 cases against politicians, mostly from the Opposition, across the country in the past 10 years but only two of them led to convictions, the Centre informed Parliament on Wednesday.
As many as 138 of these cases were registered during the second term of the Narendra Modi government(2019-2024).
According to the data provided by the government, the ED had filed cases against 42 politicians in the last four years of the first term of the Modi government between 2015 and 2019.
The agency has been probing several high-profile cases involving politicians,mostly belonging to the Opposition parties.
Opposition leaders have long accused the Centre of setting probe agencies,especially the ED, on their leaders to intimidate or malign them.
Media reports have suggested that about 95 per cent of all politicians who have been raided, booked, arrested or questioned by the ED since 2014 are from the Opposition parties.
The highest number of cases — 32 — was filed between April 2022 and March 2023. The agency registered 13 cases against politicians between April 2024 and February 2025, the data showed. The third term of the Modi government began in June last year.
The data was provided by junior finance minister Pankaj Chaudhary in the Rajya Sabha in response to queries raised by CPM MP A.A. Rahim from Kerala. Rahim sought to know the number of ED cases registered against political leaders in the past 10 years, along with their parties, the year the cases were registered, the states they belong to, and the number of convictions and acquittals in such cases.
He also sought to know whether there had been an increase in the number of ED cases registered against Opposition leaders in recent years and whether the Centre had undertaken any reforms to improve the efficiency of the ED probes.
Chaudhary said state or party-wise data on ED cases against politicians was not available. He said the central agency “takes up cases for investigation based on credible evidence and does not distinguish cases based on political affiliations, religion or otherwise”.