Manmohan Singh may flaunt his parliamentary majority to hold on to power, but the fact remains that he still does not dare to fight a direct election, and he has lost the confidence of the people
After the latest developments in the Supreme Court on ‘Coalgate’, any Prime Minister worth his salt would have resigned of his own volition. There is not an iota of doubt that Mr Manmohan Singh has completely lost any residual moral authority he might have had, after the apex court exposed him and his Government before the country.
As we know now, the Union Government was seeking to cover up its top level wrong-doers in ‘Coalgate’ by forcing the Central Bureau of Investigation to take out what the court described as “the heart” out of their findings regarding the scam. That this development comes after a series of other scandals, in all of which the trail of wrongdoing runs to the pinnacle of power, makes the demand for the Prime Minister’s resignation justified.
Prime Ministers the world over have resigned on far minor issues because they have a basic commitment to democracy. The Congress’s rule in this country, however, is a family concern. Obviously, issues of moral responsibility do not bother those who want to treat the country like a family jagir.
Mr Singh cuts a tragic figure today. The Prime Minister does not even dare to contest a direct election and, instead, seeks for the sixth time, a seat in the Upper House of Parliament —and that too from Assam where he has no natural linkage. That the Congress still does not risk trying to get Mr Singh elected to the lok Sabha through a popular mandate leads to one of two conclusions: Either Mr Singh is not a people’s leader or the Congress wants a nominee Prime Minister who can be controlled by its party president.
The Prime Minister seeking his entry into Parliament once again through the Rajya Sabha route comes at the close of a series of other events that have exposed his vulnerability. When news broke that his then law and Justice Minister Ashwani Kumar had summoned CBI officials and altered the report prepared by the investigating agency on the coal block allocation scam for submission to the apex court, Mr Singh insisted that the Minister had done nothing wrong and would not quit.
The court’s observations, after the CBI had to admit the interference of the Government, made the UPA regime’s position increasingly untenable. Yet the Prime Minister refused to admit that Mr Kumar should go. Only when the Government was faced with the double whammy of the huge bribe trail that implicated Railways Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal as well as the apex court’s rebuff to the CBI for behaving like a “caged parrot”, did the Congress begin to seek a bail-out.
It is common sense that if the coal block allocation was perverse, it could not have happened without the knowledge of the Prime Minister, who was also the Minister for Coal at that time. The truth that the CBI was forced to admit to the apex court, exposes the design that the then law Minister, the Attorney General and officials of the PMO worked together to engineer a cover-up operation. That the apex court has now found, after the CBI’s admission on April 26, that the ‘Coalgate’ report was substantially changed, further underlines this.
Also, given that Mr Kumar owed his job to Mr Singh, who defended him all through, it is evident, when one puts two and two together, that the former law Minister was seeking to protect none less than the Prime Minister himself. If the culprit was someone much lower in the hierarchy, the law Minister would not have taken such a huge risk.
With the organiser of this cover-up sacked, the question remains: What about the guilty whom Mr Kumar wanted to saveIJ For all practical purposes, that person is none other than Mr Singh himself. In any case, the democratic tradition has been that for a significant operational or moral lapse under his charge, the political head concerned takes up responsibility and quits.
Also, while some bribe-givers have, no doubt, been located in ‘Coalgate’, the same cannot be said about the bribe-takers. They still remain behind the curtain. Why has none of them been identified and interrogated so farIJ Increasingly it is becoming clear that if the truth has to come out, this Government and its Prime Minister cannot remain in office any more.
The Congress’s daily chant over the last four years has been that Mr Singh has an impeccable record of honesty and integrity. Given that record, why is it that he then goes on to defend the indefensibleIJ There can only be two reasons for this: First, since no politician worth his salt will ever want to be someone else’s whipping boy for no reason, Mr Singh knows that he has to protect his protégé who covers up for him. If he fails, then that same protégé would turn against him.
The other equally credible explanation is that Mr Singh, as Coal Minister, acted at the behest of someone else more powerful. In the present dispensation, who could be that powerful personIJ With his term in the Rajya Sabha ending soon and he being dependent on his party command for ensuring his continued membership to Parliament, perhaps Mr Singh saw that he had few choices before him.
There are other scandals, like the 2G Spectrum scam, where also Mr Singh’s name has come up. The Congress, through its nominee on the chair of the Joint Parliamentary Committee looking into the 2G scam, Mr PC Chacko, has been trying to protect the Prime Minister — even as all non-Congress members in the committee have refused to toe his line. However, even in this case, if Mr Chacko drops the charade of defending the Prime Minister, (following, let’s say, a hint from 10 Janpath), Mr Singh will be in the dock.
Even the Congress’s erstwhile collaborator, the DMK, has now joined the Opposition in the JPC to demand that a spade be called a spade. It means that the Prime Minister of the country is being politically blackmailed by his own party and, therefore, to save himself, his Government — and most importantly, the first family of this fiefdom, Mr Singh has to follow the diktats of forces external to his administration.
When Mr Singh himself is so vulnerable, how can the country trust him any more with governanceIJ The question is not whether he enjoys parliamentary majority. It is a matter of personal and public integrity and also the security of the country. That is why the BJP is asking this Prime Minister to quit.