R K Misra on corruption and the Modi government. Forked Tongue & Flexible Factsheet
In fishing -as in politics- nothing is more ungainly than a
fisherman pulled into the water by his own catch. Hurling muck from the safety
of the shore and making it stick may have brought Narendra Modi to the
helm of India in 2014 but the Teflon-coated frying pan is itself on fire
today .
His government faces the filth of the Lalit Modi revelations, the bloodied Vyapam scam and now the Madhya
Pradesh Dental and Medical Admission Test taint. Oscillating between maladministrative misdemeanour and crass corruption charges are
veteran minister Sushma Swaraj, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhararaje Scindia, MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, and Maharashtra minister Pankaja
Munde. After 'pehle’ AAP law minister Jitender Singh Tomar landed in
the ‘cooler’ over his qualifications, union HRD minister Smriti Irani is next
in line for a judicial scrutiny of her venerable CV.
Meanwhile, Modi’s anti-corruption plank is in tatters and
the school boyish line, one for joy is fast giving way to two for sorrow,
three for pain and now four for anguish with five for agony in the
pipeline. While Manmohan Singh ruled for good of ten years before shit
hit the ceiling, just 435 days in the saddle, Modi now mired in similar slime,
is resorting to the same golden silence that he mocked his predecessor
for. Those who have a felicity with words, often find themselves hoisted
with their own petard by the very sentences they hurl with gay abandon
when aiming for power.
“I neither aid nor abet corruption”,(main na khata hun na
khane deta hun) went the punchline of posters carrying large pictures of
the Gujarat chief minister put up during the 2007 Gujarat Vidhan Sabha
elections. On March 22, 2011 writing in his own blog, Modi
said, "On
the one side it is being said that the Indian government is
completely corrupt; then there are reports by America and Wikileaks which refer
to the state of Gujarat where the leader is un-corruptible.” So said Modi
speaking in self- praise. That the Wikileaks reference to the Gujarat
leader stands disputed is a different matter though.
In politics, personal ‘hygiene’ and public ‘sanitation’ may
look apart but are closely inter-linked. Was the over twelve year Modi
rule in Gujarat a by word for probity in public life? How clean was the
Modi ministry in the state? lets see.
Purshottam Solanki,the fisheries minister and a
powerful koli leader ,indicted on crass corruption charges, enjoyed a charmed
existence as long as Modi ruled Gujarat. Indicted by the Gujarat High
Court in a Rs 400 crore fishing contracts scam, he nevertheless continued in
office regardless. Solanki gave away fishing contracts for 58 reservoirs in the
state each spread over at least 200 hectares at rates far below the upset
price in the previous contract. The bids worth Rs 40 crores per annum were
awarded for a meager Rs 2.36 crore and for ten years! You have to be blind
as a bat if you can’t see the corrupt practice. In September 2008 petitioners
knocked the doors of the High Court alleging corruption by the minister as well
as violation of the process of tendering.
In November 2008, a two judge bench of
justice Doshit and Sharad Dave ruled that the contracts were wrongly awarded
for ‘extraneous reasons’ and ordered re-tendering. As the order clearly
established irregularities by the minister, the petitioner pressed for his
prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act. After dilly-dallying for
long, the Modi cabinet on June 27,2012 refused to prosecute Solanki. The
Governor, meanwhile sanctioned the prosecution and the minister promptly
challenged this decision in the High Court with the state government supporting
the minister against the Governor.
On September 20, 2012 ,the Gujarat High Court
dismissed Solanki’s petition. Solanki and the Gujarat
government had made out that in the parliamentary system ,the council of
ministers is the real executive, not the Governor who” had acted contrary to
the aid and advice of the council of ministers”. Rejecting this plea Justice
Rajesh Shukla ruled that the power exercised by the Governor was not alien to
her. In a stinging indictment of the Modi government which was, in a matter of
saying, abetting corruption, the judge ruled: "If, in cases where prima facie
case is clearly made out, sanction to prosecute high functionaries is refused or
withheld , democracy itself will be at stake. It will lead to a situation where
people in power may break the law with impunity, safe in the knowledge they
will not be prosecuted as the requisite sanction will not be granted”.
.And though the court had asked the governor to decide on
the minister’s prosecution, the cabinet did not sanction it until
the petitioner moved court against the government including the chief
minister for contempt of court proceedings . It was only in July when the court
ordered the government to send the report of it’s cabinet meeting with regard
to prosecuting Solanki to the governor’s office ,that Modi was forced to act.
Subsequently , the enquiry was handed over to the police which
dilly-dallied and then to the Anti-corruption bureau (ACB) which had
submitted it’s report to the special ACB court in June 2014.
The second case is that of Babubhai Bokharia, water
resources minister in the Modi government .In June 2013 he was sentenced to
three years imprisonment in the Rs 54 crore illegal limestone mining scam of
2006 along with two others. Police had arrested Bokharia from the Porbandar
airport in 2007 as he had left the country after the complaint against
him and was declared an absconder. The High Court had later released him
on bail.In 2012 he had contested the elections on a BJP ticket after defeating
Congress leader Arjun Modvadia and was made cabinet minister by Modi. He
continued to remain a minister in the Modi cabinet even after his conviction
and sentence and does so to this day .The conviction was subsequently
overturned in November 2014.
This is besides the well known case of minister of
state for Home Amit Shah who quit the government after the CBI booked him in
connection with the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case and spent an
extended period in prison .Out on bail, Shah, a close confidante of Modi today
presides over the destiny of the ruling party in the country while another Modi
minister Mayaben Kodnani who quit the cabinet following her arrest in the
Naroda Patiya communal killings of 2002 stands sentenced to life
imprisonment.
It is this backdrop that explains the continued silence of
the Prime Minister and is also indicative of the future line of action. Chief Minister Modi often railed against the CBI as the ‘Congress bureau of
investigations’, but as Prime Minister has no compunctions about putting it
to use as his own handmaiden. The sequence of Central investigation events
over the last one year bear this out. And now the Vyapam scam investigations
have also gone to the very same pliable CBI.
A point to ponder
however, is how come that only known Modi opponents within the BJP-
Sushma , Shivraj and Scindia- and those capable of emerging as challengers find
themselves in the eye of the storm. But
more about it some other time. For the moment suffices to say that those who
have studied the past closely, have a fair idea of the unfolding future for
mental signatures always follow a familiar pattern.
